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The Captain of Our Faith 








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The Captain of Our Faith 



By 

Rev. Wallace MacMullen, D. D 

Of thb New York Conference 



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CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
NEWYORK: EATON AND MAINS 






LIBP*fry * ^ongj^sJ 
Two Oneies fl«*ived 

JUL 29 1904 

Cooyrleht Entry 

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Class ol_xxo. nc. 

COPY B 



COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY 
JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 



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CONTENTS 



Chapter Page 

I. The Captain of Our Faith. Heb. 

xii, 2, 7 

II. Kagi.es ' Wings and Patient Feet. 

Isa. xl, 31, 22 

III. Light and Life. John i, 4, - 37 

IV. Sei.e-care. i Tim. iv, 16, - - 48 

V. Our Attitude toward Our Time. 

Col. iv, 5; Kph. v, 16, - - 65 

VI. Robbery. Mai. iii, 8, 78 

VII. A Vision and a Voyage. Acts xvi, 

9, io, - 92 

VIII. The Inner Life. Prov. xxiii, 7, - 113 

IX. Truth through Consecration. 

Rom. xii, 1, 2, - - - 127 



THE CAPTAIN OF OUR FAITH 

"Looking unto Jesus, the Captain of our faith." — 
Heb. xii, 2. 

The margin of the revision will give this reading 
"Captain" in place of "Author." Christianity has 
its roots in a history. Out of the historical facts 
in which it is rooted there comes a system of truth 
often called "the faith," and a personal life which 
is distinctively a life of faith. The word "faith" 
in the text may be interpreted in both these ways: 
first, as belief in the Word or truth of God ; second, 
as practical confidence in the love of God. In the 
preceding chapter in which the apostle recites the 
historical triumphs of faith, both these aspects of 
it may be constantly found. In the heroes of the 
Church in Israel, these elements mingle: accept- 
ance of the Word of God, confidence in the life of 
God. In these ways, then, we will look at faith — 

7 



8 The; Captain op Our Faith. 

as belief and as trust — and find Jesus our Captain 
in both. 

I. Our Captain as Commander. 

I. In matters of belief. If, like skeptical Pilate, 
but with a better, a more earnest spirit, our query 
is, "What is Truth?" Christ's answer is, "I am the 
Truth." And that description of Himself is His 
claim of dominion over man's intellect. He identi- 
fies Himself with the eternal reality of things. 
Truth is the authority to which all loyal minds do 
homage. Christ by His Spirit is to rule over all 
the movements of man's mind. Christ in His teach- 
ings has uttered the final words beyond which, in 
the realms in which He chose to move, man's mind 
can not go. His solemn "verifies" are the founda- 
tion stones on which our beliefs must rest; the 
corner stones from which our creeds must take their 
lines. He insisted on His listeners' assent to His 
teaching. Loyalty to Him included faith in His 
words. He appealed to His works as evidence of 
the truth of His words. The objectors to His 
teaching had seen His miraculous works, and if 
His words awaken no response in their dead hearts, 
if His claims are not instantly indorsed, as they 
should be, by their own innermost lives, He will 



The; Captain op Our Faith. 9 

call in the evidence of their senses. "Believe Me 
for the very works' sake." "The works' sake:" 
not because of their mighty power — for power may 
be employed for evil ends — but because of their 
mighty love. The mercy of my deeds cries 
aloud for a recognition of the truth of my words. 
That 's one appeal of Christ. He bids them rec- 
ognize the fact that in Him "mercy and truth are 
met together." Then He appealed to the testimony 
of His own consciousness and asserted its truth. 
"Though I speak of Myself, yet My testimony is 
true." The Pharisees objected to His testimony 
concerning Himself on the accepted ground that 
one's witness to one's self can not be taken as 
reliable. But He broke away from the teaching 
of that low human principle that self-estimate 
is worthless, a principle which is true only because 
and only in the measure that ignorance or falsehood 
holds the measuring line, and insisted that, although 
He bore witness to Himself, yet His witness was 
true; for no ignorance darkened His perfect self- 
knowledge, and no deceit stained His lips. He 
knew Himself, and spoke truly out of His perfect 
knowledge. 

For both of these reasons, to-day as then, Christ's 
words are to command our beliefs. His works in 



io This Captain of Our Faith. 

the world, mightier than any His Judean hearers 
had known — works of holy ministry, works of en- 
lightening truth; works of subduing, transforming 
grace; the works of the centuries, the works of 
to-day ; the works in all the world, the works in our 
own hearts — the works are tributes to the Word. 
And through them the voice of Christ speaks, 
"Believe Me for the works' sake. They are the 
signs of My rank. These trophies of My power 
in the fields of grace establish My rights in the 
fields of truth. Believe Me." And we do. Some 
of His words need no credentials. Our souls re- 
spond to them. Our experiences establish them. 
But if there are words which we can not verify — 
words, the whole meaning of which hide away in 
profound mystery; words which reach out into the 
untried future; words which deal with the nature 
and will of the eternal God — then His appeal is 
this: "Though My word is unsupported by your 
experience; though you can not test its truth; 
though I simply speak of Myself and can offer no 
evidence save the statements of My own conscious- 
ness, believe Me." And we will. "We will, Master, 
simply because the word is Thine." Glad we are 
when the life of our soul tells us that His sweet 
words are true ; sure we are that those words are 



The: Captain of Our Faith. ii 

true, even though we can not prove their truth, 
because He spoke them, and that some day, when 
we grow large enough, our glorious experiences 
will register the meanings and testify to the truth 
of the great words which now stretch away beyond 
our grasp. 

There are certain great teachings of Christ which 
ought to master us ; truths to which the great Cap- 
tain of our faith commands us to bow; great, 
prominent spiritual landmarks, out of sight of which 
we are never to wander. We may explore with all 
freedom within the limits which they mark, but they 
are boundaries from which we must not escape. 
They are the truths concerning God's being, con- 
cerning man's need, concerning man's future. We 
will never let go what Christ has taught us about 
God. God may become, to our adoring thought, 
more and more majestic as the universe which we 
study becomes vaster; our conceptions of Him may 
become burdened with an unspeakable, solemn, 
oppressive grandeur as science pushes its inquiries J 
reverently out into the silent mysteries of creation. 
It may be true, it will be truer, that God is un- 
knowable in the unthinkable measures of His being, 
but we will never, never wander from the truth 
that God is Christ-like. Christ has declared God's 



12 The Captain of Our Faith. 

conscience and heart in final terms, and these are 
the facts of supreme worth to us. He denounced in 
scathing terms those who treasured their sins; He 
had for hypocrites fierce, blighting invective; He 
bravely prophesied the hell which unforsaken sin 
would lead to; yet He wept over the sinners He 
rebuked, He sought the company of the outcast, 
He died for sinners. And both the moral sternness 
and the tender love are pictures of God. God is 
a consuming fire, the perpetual condemnation of 
sin in me, the explanation of my conscience, the 
voice that speaks in all the moral thunders which 
conscience rolls through my soul. But He is also 
my Father, grieving over the wreck which sin has 
wrought in His child, forgiving the foul offense 
which sin has been against Him, taking the sin- 
stained soul into His own hands that He may wipe 
away its stains. God as Holy Father — the Captain 
of our faith commands us to believe that truth. 
Do we? 

He taught that the supreme need of man's life 
was salvation from sin. When the palsied man 
was before Him for healing, He spoke first to the 
needy soul : "Thy sins be forgiven thee." He came 
to call sinners to repentance. He shed His blood 
for the remission of sins. Our supreme need is 



The; Captain otf Our Faith. 13 

spiritual. The great Captain of our faith bids us 
obey the ordering of that truth. Do we? Do we 
fight sin as earnestly as we fight ignorance or 
poverty ? Do we long after and strain after Holiness 
as we do after information or money? 

He taught that this life is but a segment of life ; 
that the grave does not bound it; that beyond that 
dark, dread experience there are solemn realities of 
joy or suffering; that sin persisted in will bring the 
soul into tormenting anguish. He drew somber 
pictures of the intolerable pain and unutterable loss 
awaiting the soul which will not be separated from 
its sin. And the words were loving — love's prophe- 
cies of sin's results. He spoke radiant words of a 
Father's house and waiting mansions, and gave 
promises of Paradise and blessedness. And He 
commands our acceptance of this truth of the im- 
mortal life, that sin's certain harvest may be our 
sufficient warning, that our glorious destiny may 
robe us now with dignity, that already for us earth 
may be crammed with heaven and every common 
experience be on fire with God. 

2. In matters of trust. This is the sweet, ten- 
der meaning of faith — trust in a person. It is not the 
speech of the intellect, but the speech of the heart. 
It is not born of logic, but of suffering need and 



14 Ths Captain otf Our Faith. 

assuring love. And He is Captain of our faith in 
this aspect of it. He commands our trust. To 
accept the truth of His teaching is well; to accept 
the love of His heart is better. He is more than 
a philosopher; He is a Savior. In addition to His 
truth He has strength and tenderness. While He 
says to restless, darkened minds, "Believe My 
words/' He also says to sorrowing, sinning souls, 
"Believe in My purpose and power; trust your life 
to Me." To the sinking Peter, "Wherefore didst 
thou doubt?" To the pleading sufferer, "Believest 
thou that I am able to do this?" To the grieving 
disciples, "Believe also in Me." One of the main 
pleas of His life was for trust. Herein was the 
bitter grief of His life — the distrust of those He 
loved. It is this personal note which distinguishes 
His ministry. "Come unto Me for rest." "I am 
the door," ever swinging to give entrance to the 
fold, ever strong to shut out the enemy. "I am the 
Good Shepherd," leading with watchful care My 
helpless flock, protecting them even with My own 
life. My offered life is your ransom, My broken 
body your food, My flowing blood the fountain for 
the cleansing of your sin. Rest in Me. Always 
He commands our trust. Allegiance to His words 
involves loyalty to Him. To be enlightened by 



The) Captain of Our Faith. 15 

His truth is precious; to be saved and supported 
forever and forever by His grace is glorious. And 
wherefore should we not trust Him ? If His mighty 
works and clear, unsullied soul are reasons enough 
for the acceptance of His teaching, are not the 
ministering hands, the tearful eyes, the weary feet, 
the days of mercy and the nights of prayer, the 
hunger and the homelessness, the pierced hands and 
thorn-crowned head and breaking heart, proofs 
enough of His purpose? Has He not a right to 
command our trust? Are not those stripes with 
which His life is covered the signs of His Cap- 
taincy? Do they not make Him supreme among 
all the forces of love? 

II. Our Captain as Leader. 

Leader in the sense of One who has Himself 
passed through the battles into which He leads ; 
One who in Himself is the pledge of triumph and 
the suggestion of the method by which it comes. 
He has come from the ranks. He is first among 
many brethren. His own human experiences qualify 
Him to lead the souls intrusted to Him. So here, 
beyond the idea of authority, we get the idea of 
example. One of the prominent meanings of the 
original word here is "Pattern." He is the Pattern 



16 The; Captain op Our Faith. 

of our faith. Our faith is not only to be under 
His control, but to be like His in kind. 

I. In belief. He repudiated tradition. He went 
to the wells of truth for Himself. He refused for 
a minute to recognize in the Rabbinical rubbish of 
the years, intended for the defense and application 
of the law, any authority whatever. "Ye have made 
the commandment of God of none effect by your 
tradition." But for the truth itself, however ancient, 
He had the most profound reverence. "I came 
not to destroy the law." "Not one jot or tittle of 
it shall pass away." But while He revered and ful- 
filled old truth, He brought forth new truth. He 
was more than a commentator, He was a revealer. 
"I say unto you" was the formula introducing His 
teaching. Though the old enriched Him, it did not 
confine Him. And, then, note His allegiance to 
truth. Was not His life always the illustration of 
His words? Was it not the voluntary fulfillment 
of earlier truth? Did not His example summarize 
His teachings? When He taught God as loving 
Father, did not His sacrifice show that the truth 
had taken Him captive? When He emphasized the 
supreme need of spiritual beauty in human life, did 
not His own stainless purity show that the truth 
of holiness ruled His soul ? Take these suggestions, 



The: Captain of Our Faith. 17 

then, for belief : independence, reverence, allegiance. 
Where shall we go for the life-giving draughts of 
the truth? To the creeds of the councils? No; 
but to the Word of the Lord and to the life we 
have received from Him. Grant that the builders 
of the creeds were wise and for the most part 
spiritual, are we then to put their theological struc- 
tures on a par with the temple of truth itself? Are 
the grace, the symmetry, the untold treasures of 
this matchless Scripture structure which the Spirit 
of God has been building through the centuries, 
reproduced within the bare, logical walls which were 
put up in a few weeks or months ? Is the certifying, 
revealing, satisfying life of God in the soul a 
treasure of which past ages had a monopoly? Not 
so. We rightly deny the authority of the creeds 
in so far as that authority is merely ecclesiastical. 
We yield to their authority in so far as they contain 
truth, for truth is always binding. Homage in 
abundance for any truth they yield, but no unworthy, 
because paralyzing, homage for the age of the creed 
or the dignity of its authors. Opinions are to be our 
teachers, not our jailers. 

But while we learn from the great Captain of 
our faith our rightful independence, we must not 
forget our reverence. To look for truth reverently 
2 



1 8 Ths Captain o£ Our Faith. 

is to be Christ-like in our search. To be inde- 
pendent does not mean to be flippant. Yet too 
much flippancy is bound up with so-called independ- 
ence. If the creeds are not our prisons, neither 
are they the butts for our ridicule. Do not dare 
make a laughing-stock of that which has been true 
for multitudes. He who sneers at the faith of his 
mother is a coward and a traitor to truth. He who 
jokes about beliefs for which men have died is a 
pigmy. Dismiss reverence in your search for truth, 
and you are doomed to darkness. If you do not 
believe what once you did believe, never bring out 
the vanished belief for sneer or laugh. Treat it as 
you would the sacred dust of a loved one. 

Then, above all things, be loyal to your beliefs. 
Learn that from the great Pattern of our faith. Let 
your beliefs be full of fiber. Never mind the nega- 
tives. Do n't advertise the things you do n't believe. 
People do not care about your doubts. They have 
enough of their own. Be positive. Speak the things 
which are true to you. Then be true to your truth. 
Let your life be the voice that speaks your creed. 
Those parts of our creeds which are illustrated in 
our lives are the valuable parts; such illustration 
is possible, for life is molded by belief if the belief 
is yielded to. Yet some ignorantly say, "It makes 



The Captain of" Our Faith. 19 

no difference what one believes if only one lives 
right." As though life did not flow out of belief! 
As though the real were not born of the ideal ! The 
other thing is true — that beliefs are built out of 
experience ; but this also is true — that life is shaped 
by belief. Under the Master's leadership let us 
search for the truth bravely and persistently, and 
when we find it let us be true enough to greet it 
reverently and swear allegiance to its authority, and 
we shall be led by it into the perfect liberty of the 
children of God. 

2. In trust. Here again Jesus is our Pattern. 
He called men to trust Him, and at the same time 
identified Himself with God, and so fastened man's 
trust to its only sure Divine anchorage. And while 
urging trust as a necessary force in man's life, He 
was not recommending a force which was absent 
from His own life. He, too, walked by faith. He 
was perfectly human. We need not fear to insist 
upon that. He acknowledged dependence as we 
must. He trusted and was delivered as we may 
be. At the very opening of His ministry He adopted 
trust as His method for life. "Command these 
stones to become bread," said the tempter, and 
though hunger weakened Him, He said, "Man shall 
not live by bread alone, but by every word that pro- 



20 The; Captain of" Our Faith. 

ceedeth out of the mouth of God." It was the choice 
of dependence, the speech of trust. When the dark- 
ness of the Garden shadowed Him, and its agony 
shook His soul, and He cowered beneath the burden 
of redemptive woe, and shrank back from the cup 
which became more bitter as its dregs were reached, 
He said, "The cup which My Father hath given Me 
to drink, shall I not drink it ?" "Not as I will, but as 
Thou wilt." It is the choice of the Father's plan 
for His life. It is the triumph of trust. On the 
cross, when the sun is filling His wounds with fire, 
and every nerve is a torturing scourge, and the 
heavens grow black, and His calm spirit is swept 
by the awful storm of His accepted suffering, and 
His anguished, darkened eyes could not see the 
Father's face, and He cried, "My God, my God, 
why hast Thou forsaken Me?" He said at last, 
"Father, into Thy hands I commit My spirit." It 
is the glorious victory of trust. Truly He is the 
Pattern of our trust. And if our trust is modeled 
after His, then for the body's care we will depend 
upon our Father, and He who feeds the birds and 
paints the lilies and numbers the hairs of our heads 
will honor our trust. For all the life's support and 
development we will rest on Him, confident that 
He knoweth the things we have need of. We will 



The Captain oj? Our Faith. 21 

seek and trust God's plan for our lives, and if in the 
plan's development some bitter cups may be pressed 
to our lips, and the wondering questions arise, and 
in our anguish we cry, "If it be possible let this 
cup pass," yet our trust will lead us into the peace 
of His accepted will. And when the end comes, 
and the world and friends recede, faith will furnish 
wings to the timid spirit, and we will mount into life 
singing, "O grave, where is thy victory? O death, 
where is thy sting?" 

Captain of our faith ! His rule is full of mercy. 
His leadership is full of inspiration. He is bringing 
His armies to the glory where He Himself has gone. 
Let Him choose the way. Some day we will 



" Wonder at the beauteous hours, 
The slow result of winter showers, 



when we 



With joy upon our heads arise, 
And meet our Captain in the skies.' 



II. 

EAGLES' WINGS AND PATIENT FEET. 

"They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their 
strength; they shall put forth wings as eagles; 
they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk 
and not faint/' — Isa. xl, 31. 

The text suggests to us: 
I. The Soul's Attitude. 

1. In the dark. When Israed by the route taken 
in the escape from Egypt, marched into what proved 
a cul de sac, a blind alley, the sea before, the heights 
flanking them, the Egyptian squadrons behind them, 
there was but one resource. Neither their frenzied 
fear, nor their wise energy, not the inventive genius 
of their leader, could avail to rescue them. They 
must stand still and see God work. "Stand still and 
see the salvation of thy God," was the order of 
Moses. When Cromwell was at Dunbar, with the 
opposing Scottish army in a practically unassailable 
position, and his own soldiers sick and starving, he 

22 



Eagles" Wings and Patient Feet. 23 

had resolved on the retreat of his troops, but in the 
dusk of the evening he saw signs of movement in 
the Scottish camp. The Scottish force was ap- 
parently leaving their vantage ground and coming 
to the lower English level. Cromwell flung his 
whole force upon the enemy and scattered them. 
As the sun rose, Cromwell exclaimed : "Let God 
arise, and let His enemies be scattered; like as the 
mist vanisheth, so shalt thou drive them away." It 
seemed to the great leader the working of God, 
and the victory he received as God's gift. A father, 
as reported in the Advocate, said: "I was trying 
to save a wayward son. I had sought Divine grace, 
exhausted every means, and prayers, tears, appeals 
were all in vain. Hope and despair alternated; 
and yet I could not give him up. There was nothing 
vicious about him. He was loving and tender- 
hearted. It was the old story : he was a victim, and 
realized it. One Saturday night I found him only 
to lose him. It was midnight, and I sat in my office, 
weary and faint. I had done my best. My heart 
was broken. My aching eyes fell upon these words : 

1 Lie down and sleep, 
Leave it with God to keep 
This sorrow which is part 
Now of thy heart. 



24 The; Captain op Our Faith. 

When thou dost wake, 
If still 't is thine to take, 
Utter no wild complaint; 
Work waits thy hands ; 
If thou should'st faint, 
God understands.' 

I said, 'I will.' I went home and slept in peace. 
The next morning the way was opened, and from 
that bright Sabbath morning, through the abound- 
ing goodness of God, my boy was rescued and 
saved." 

It is this attitude the text portrays. It is the 
retreat into God; the waiting for Him. It was 
the necessary position for Israel to take in exile. 
There were no signs, in events, that their deliverance 
was at hand. Not their experience, but their faith 
was their refuge. On every hand were the evidences 
of the greatness and promises of the endurance of 
the mighty state which held them in easy control. 
Still, they had reminders of God about them and 
within them. Nature, mightier than the cities of 
men, declared to them the supreme power of the 
Supreme God. Their own history bade them not 
forget His interest in them, His gracious designs 
and His delivering power. Our resources are like 
theirs. Wait for God. His power in nature, His 
presence in life, are guarantees of His help. If 



Eagi^s' Wings and Patient Fsist. 25 

because He is strong, not a star faileth, be sure 
that the power which is not absent from any force 
in nature is the power of the Father; power which 
is controlled and directed by love. 

2. In the daylight toil. We do not need catas- 
trophe to make plain the availability of God. At 
the beginning of the last century, geology held that 
nature had made her progress by a series of catas- 
trophies. But it became clear that such things were 
quite unnecessary to account for the facts which 
we see. And the new geology sees that great natural 
changes are brought about by existing forces. We 
do not now T , if we are truly reverent, think of God as 
filling the gaps in nature's processes, but as present 
in them all. But sometimes in our theories of life 
we limit God to the old spasmodic method. He 
interferes in emergencies, but is not present in our 
daily toil. This is the practical atheism of which 
the multitudes are guilty. When Washington, with 
his ragged, hungry, shivering army is waiting the 
winter out at Valley Forge, and is found on his 
knees asking help of God; when Lincoln, "the 
kindly, brave, far-seeing man," before Gettysburg, 
according to General Sickles, was closeted with God 
and issued from his communion sure of victory; 
when Havelock, marching to relieve Eucknow, was 



26 The Captain of Our Faith. 

up an hour before the camp was astir each morning 
to confer with God as to his campaign, and listen 
to Him in the open Word and upon his knees; 
when Jesus, rising a great while before day, went 
into desert places to talk with the Father, and up 
to mountain summits to spend the night in prayer; 
in all these cases we can feel that such world leaders, 
carrying such vast burdens, were entirely rational 
in waiting upon God. In them it was not a sign of 
weakness, but proof of insight into the source of 
power. But if the exceptional men in striking 
crises need such help, are ordinary men in life's 
regular business free from the need of it? Is God 
necessary in the world's emergencies, and unneces- 
sary in its daily processes? Ah, the catastrophe 
theory still operates. When sorrow comes, or other 
disaster, and the currents of life run sluggishly or 
threaten to stop, God is resorted to. He serves as 
a stimulus when the fires of life burn low. He 
interferes to take us safely over the break in ex- 
perience until we can get along with Him. Is that 
our theory or our practice? One can not help 
wondering at the shameful discourtesy of it, and 
the suicidal irrationality of it. Israel not only had 
need to wait for Him in the darkness of Babylon, 
but in the slow and weary march over the deserts 
to distant Zion, and in all the discouraging, weary- 



Eagi^s' Wings and Patient Eeet. 27 

ing work of rebuilding the structure of their national 
life when Zion was reached.^ For slow develop- 
ment, as well as for dramatic deliverance, they must 
wait on Him. And that is true about us all. Their 
movement from Babylon and their reinstatement 
in distant Jerusalem, experiences to which they were 
led to look by this prophecy, were political and re- 
ligious — a restored city and a restored Temple. 
And from neither part of the process could God 
take His departure. 

Ah, how we need to wait for Him day by day! 
We have a tendency to become automatic in life's 
work; daily duty is discharged in mechanical 
fashion. Inspirations in it are not looked for. 
And in our religious work the same is true. That 
is, the work which has a religious appearance. 
What a wealth of benevolent toil is poured out 
upon the needy! But we have not understood the 
meanings of such toil if it has seemed a substitute 
for devotional life, or a supplement to it. Some- 
times when we set out to explain why the devo- 
tional life in our Churches is less eager and enthu- 
siastic than formerly, we offer as part of the ex- 
planation the fact that we have so many humani- 
tarian agencies at work to-day. Our people are 
so busy in so many other ways that were previously 
uncommon. But this is the mistake of substituting 



28 The Captain of Our Faith. 

philanthropy for religion. Our humanitarian work 
is to be the expression of our devotional life. 
Philanthropy, if it be complete and not partial, has 
its inspiration and its refuge in religion. Our 
service to man will not be complete and will not be 
patient, if we do not wait upon God. We offer 
instruction, entertainment, culture, to needy lives. 
How can we make such offers in faith or courage 
if God is not breaking in upon our souls with 
promises and power? And how can we watch such 
souls growing in knowledge or in practical ability 
without longing to have them know God? Our 
waiting upon God is not respite from our toil, but 
an essential part of it ; and is to be regarded as a part 
of our equipment for it. We will not strain the 
language here very much if we say, "Wait upon 
God as courtiers do before a king, as servants do 
before a master." We are to come back from the 
tasks into His presence to render our reports and 
receive new strength. 

II. The Promised Strength. 

i. Its achievements. "They shall put forth 
wings as eagles." Eagle flights are among the 
things God plans for those who trust Him. Imagine 
the circumstances when Cyrus proclaimed freedom 



Eagi^s' Wings and Patient Feet. 29 

to the captive Jews. Multitudes of the captives 
were quite content with their new home; for some, 
Jerusalem was but a name, for others a dim memory. 
But with those who still waited for Jehovah, there 
was a perpetual longing and a pleading faith, and 
we can fancy the rapture which thrilled them when 
their emancipation proclamation was issued. The 
home land, the holy city, the sacred temple, filled 
their dreams. How glad they were ! A new trans- 
figuring knowledge of the grace of God has come 
to them. He has decided at last that their warfare 
is accomplished. 

" When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, 

We were like unto them that dream. 
Then was our mouth filled with laughter, 

And our tongue with singing : 
Then said they among the nations, 

The Lord had done great things for them. 
The Lord hath done great things for us ; 

Whereof we are glad." 

Their souls were full of song, their eyes were 
flashing with the glory of the prospect, their days 
were restless with enthusiastic preparation. 

Soaring, ecstatic experiences may not be the 
highest proof of religious power, but they are among 
its genuine notes. It is not for us to say that in 
primitive days such ecstasies were in place, but not 



30 The Captain of Our Faith. 

to-day. Of course, there has been a growth in self- 
control. We need not look for, nor desire, the old 
physical excitements, but heart rapture is not an 
ancient relic, or should not be. The ethical revivals 
which are frequently prophesied in which the various 
departments of human life will become annexed 
provinces of the King will be welcome, but to have 
them thorough or permanent, let them be based in 
heart revivals in which God's delivering will is 
declared and His perfect love shed abroad. We 
may still have eagle flights of joy when we wait 
for God. We can rejoice with these delivered cap- 
tives in ancient Babylon, whose ears were full of 
the music of breaking fetters. Others, too, have 
soared till they could seem to 

" Touch the heavenly strings 
And vie with Gabriel while he sings 
In notes almost divine." 

Beecher records an experience in which there rose 
up in him "such a sense of God's taking care of 
those who put their trust in Him, that for an hour 
all the world was crystalline, the heavens were 
lucid, and I sprang to my feet and began to cry 
and laugh." To be sure, there is a joyousness that 
comes from health and healthy-mindedness, but it 
can not compare with religious ecstasy. Browning 



Eagles' Wings and Patient Feet. 31 

suggests a contrast of the two kinds and sources of 
joy in "Saul." In one place, David sings; 

" O, the wild joys of living ! the leaping from rock up to 
rock, 
The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool 
silver shock 
Of a plunge in a pool's living water. 
How good is man's life, the mere living ! how fit to em- 
ploy 
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy !'' 

But that joy of the minstrel before the melan- 
choly king did not compare with the rapture which 
was his after the full revelation of God's suffering 
love has broken upon him. He declares he knew 
not how he found his way home, there were wit- 
nesses with him on every side, he broke through 
them, 
"As a runner beset by the populace famished for news." 

" The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with her crews ; 
And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and 

shot 
Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge." 

But God supported him, God suppressed all the 
tumult, and quenched it with quiet, "till the rapture 
was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest." 
Many a soul knows this almost startling change 
that comes over nature when it has been made glad 
by the truth and the presence of God. 



32 The; Captain of Our Faith. 

Emotionalism we have too highly emphasized 
possibly. Perhaps rather it is true that we have 
had in mind too much one type of experience as 
the standard to which all must conform. We have 
forgotten the various structures of souls, and that 
certain forms of emotional experience are impossible 
to some by the very laws of their life. But the 
emotional is a permanent element in human nature. 
It is irrational to say we may look for the transports 
of human love, the fine flashing joys which come 
from sweet human intercourse, but must not dream 
of such results in connection with God. This Bible 
is a record of human experience. Recall its salient 
figures, Abraham, Moses, Samuel, Elijah, Isaiah, 
David, Hosea, Paul. And how much of the reve- 
lation which clusters around these names has its 
essence in transforming experience. By which we 
do not mean a dry chronicle of events in their lives, 
nor a catalogue of their opinions, nor a record of 
their actions, but vision, glory, rapture, joyous con- 
viction about God. And is the constitution of man 
utterly changed? How did such raptures come 
then? From brooding upon God's truth, from the 
loving, reverent gaze upon His work, from visita- 
tions of His Spirit. And the materials are still 
ours, His truth, His power, His grace, His Son, 
His Spirit. And when the splendor of these breaks 



Eagles' Wings and Patient Feet. 33 

in upon us, and the soul spreads its wings for eagle 
flights, the glory is not a bit of hysterics, not a 
delusion, but a valid spiritual enthusiasm. 

But these are not the only achievements of the 
promised power. "They shall run and not be 
weary." They are to have vigor to push the prepa- 
rations for the desert journey. Rapture must find 
its outlet in toil. And after the start has been 
actually made, and eagerly the delivered captives 
have left mighty Babylon and have crossed the flat 
Chaldean plains, there is the desert to be crossed. 
Glad songs, ecstatic laughter, will not be sufficient. 
They must walk all the weary way without faint- 
ing. As vigorously they pushed over the plains till 
they reached the desert's edge, and then each day 
made ready for the march over desert wastes, and 
patiently, steadily drew near to distant Zion, were 
not the vigor and the patience as certainly the 
strength of God as the song and the rapture ? Our 
flashing enthusiasms are not more certainly the gifts 
of God upon whom we wait than the vigorous en- 
ergy with which we push our enterprises, or the 
patience with which we endure our daily lot. 

2. Its development. We will not be far wrong if 
we find here an order of development. At first 
glance, this looks like an anti-climax. From eagle- 
3 



34 The Captain of Our Faith. 

flights to weary walking, is not that a descent ? Does 
it mean that a religious life is at first a thing of joy 
and glory, but that it becomes feeble, and finally 
degenerates into a kind of dogged moral persist- 
ency? As has been suggested, some cynically find 
here a portrait of religious history. In the youth of 
the race, when man's mind was juvenile, and the 
earth and its mysteries were fresh and new, it was 
easy for old men to dream beautiful dreams and 
young men to see entrancing visions. Religion was 
then in its golden age. But it is an old story now. 
The glory and the freshness of it have passed away. 
Souls do not soar any more as they did in the eagle 
days of the religious instinct; they just trudge along 
painfully at the bidding of an old religious habit. 
Religion is a poor, limping ceremonial or a juice- 
less creed. "The soul's east window of divine sur- 
prise" has been obscured "with painted saints and 
paraphrase of God." But the text is true to life, 
and we are to find in it not degeneration, but fulfill- 
ment of the religious life. To give power for great 
achievement, and courage for weary journeys, is 
greater triumph than kindling rapture, however 
blessed that may be. Most of us 

" Can not draw habitual breath, 
In the thin air of life's supremer heights ; 
We can not make each meal a sacrament." 



E agios' Wings and Patient Feet. 35 

Let us be glad, then, that we may be helped to run 
on its ordinary levels without weariness, and to walk 
even its steep slopes without fainting. Indeed we 
will show the genuineness of our visions and rap- 
tures by the way in which we act in the toil and 
wear of daily duty. Paul had visions unspeakable, 
but also service unwearied. He had wonderful pros- 
pects of a transcendent ministry, and then walked 
patiently through the stocks and stones and prisons 
of his daily experience. Was he less religious in his 
heroic endurance than when he was caught up into 
the third heaven? Was it not true, rather, that his 
heroism proved the reality of the visions? Abt 
Vogler had his inspiration, caught the music of the 
ineffable name, climbed heavenly summits of per- 
fect sound, and then rolled into the deep, and at 
last found his resting-place on the C-major of com- 
mon life. And if we find music substantial and 
steady in common things, we are enjoying religious 
triumph. Jesus confers with exalted prophets, was 
ministered to by angels, was "separate from sin- 
ners and higher than the heavens," had communion 
with God. And yet every day He healed the sick 
and forgave sins and preached the gospel of the 
kingdom. Was He less Divine at Jacob's well with 
the sinful woman than on the Mount of Transfig- 



36 The; Captain op Our Faith. 

uration in the shining glory? Ah! the test of a 
religion is not in a crisis merely, but in steady, or- 
dinary life. Lofty moods, high ideals, entrancing 
visions, are quite possible and very blessed, but we 
must come to the test of the commonplace. It is 
in our steady reliance, in the daily renewal of 
strength, in faith which will not fail, though often 
it trembles, in hope which will not die, in tasks 
which we will not forsake, even though they tire us, 
in these that we get best acquainted with God, and 
able to find Him in the common materials of daily 
existence. 

To all alike — to the seer of the ideal — who, leav- 
ing this actual discouraging world, retreats into the 
shelter of beautiful thoughts ; to the energetic toiler 
who, with fresh vigor, daily grapples manfully his 
life task, and tries to change the deformed actual 
into the ideal; to the patient souls who live peace- 
ably with the commonplace, and strain the ear to 
hear its music, and the eye to see its beauty, — to all 
alike God comes with renewed strength. Let those 
who see, and those who toil, and those who walk 
with patience, all wait upon God. 



III. 

"LIGHT AND LIFE." 

"In Him was life; and the life was the light of men." 
— John i, 4. 

I. The Light's Source;. 

I. A truth of history. The meaning of life may 
be wrapped in mystery; its movement is unmistak- 
able. It stirs, throbs, grows. It is a thing of power. 
In the highest life the power is self-directed. It has 
purpose. "In Him was life," and the life had high 
function and gracious purpose. It was to be "the 
Light of men." By it men were to be illuminated, 
warmed, beautified. Men were to know of the fact 
and measure of His life by its bright shining. The 
life could be known only by means of its own radi- 
ance. There are three terms in human thought: 
God, man, the world. Three dark provinces to be 
explored: the nature and will of the Eternal, the 
nature and need of the soul, the meaning and des- 
tiny of the universe. Our theologies, philosophies, 



38 The Captain of Our Faith. 

and sciences work on these materials. God, that 
name which should chime musically with the throbs 
of the resting heart, and sound confidently from 
the lips of need, and weave a spell of peace around 
restless lives, and make true and obedient wayward 
feet, was a word of doubtful value until Jesus came. 
It was a common name, with a family rather than 
an individual significance. There were many gods 
whose jurisdiction was local and whose power was 
limited. In character they were nearly always des- 
potic, often malignant, frequently indifferent. Or 
to more thoughtful races God was a symbol rather 
than a life, representing unknown ultimate forces. 
In Jewish theology God was imperfectly set forth. 
In the early life of the nation He was their national 
patron with a cruel temper. In their later and 
truer thought He was severely righteous and beau- 
tifully tender, but on the whole bounded in His 
plans and dependent in them on Jewish destiny. 
And now the dear life of the Christ, mighty, holy, 
loving, with its impartial tenderness and unwearied 
toil, has made radiant the Holy Fatherhood of God. 
And how He has illuminated our own life ! Our 
researches are of small avail, almost trivial. What 
can probe and scalpel and crucible tell us of life's 
real meaning and outcome? "Life's bases rest be- 



"Light and Life." 39 

yond the probe of chemic test." That 's a spiritual 
as well as a physical truth. Such study, if supple- 
mented by nothing else, is like determining the na- 
ture of a seed by an analysis of the "fecula," the soft 
matter within the husk of the seed, which is depend- 
ent for its usefulness and its future upon the elusive 
germ of the seed. Our life, not its body home, not 
its limping faculties, not its many-colored environ- 
ment, but in its invisible, independent, individual, 
indestructible germ — what is it? The "I," not its 
tools, not its clothes, not its homes, but its qualities, 
its power, its destiny. What is our ancestry? His 
brotherhood declares our sonship to God. What 
do we need? He has solemnly declared. What 
shall we be? He has shown us in Himself. How 
may we climb? He has offered His life, love, 
power. Our ancestry and our destiny are both 
ablaze with the splendor of His revelation. And 
the history which stretches between our original 
recognition of our sonship and its ultimate develop- 
ment, darkened and disturbed perhaps with clouds 
and storms and falls, may be made luminous and 
triumphant by His own glorious grace. 

And this universe ? "We lift our torch of reason 
in this dusky cave of life" and are alarmed and puz- 
zled by the tumultuous world. But there is a place 



40 The Captain op Our Faith. 

of confidence. We may feel that' the "universe is 
full of love as well as of inexorable sternness and 
veracity." We may know that "all 's love yet all 's 
law." 

" Doubt no longer that the Highest is the wisest and the 
best, 
Let not all that saddens Nature blight thy hope or break 

thy rest, 
Quail not at the fiery mountain, at the shipwreck, or the 

rolling 
Thunder, or the rending earthquake, or the famine or the 
pest!" 

Our assurance is in Jesus. We do not ask Him, 
"How," in reference to the material system. That 
is a scientific query, and science attempts its an- 
swer. But we ask Him, "Why" and "Whither," 
and while He does not disclose the measure of the 
ultimate purpose, He does assure us of its charac- 
ter when He reveals the character of its Ruler. In 
all the wild tumult of jarring forces love is served 
and out of them all peace will come. "This world 's 
no blot for us nor blank; it means intensely and it 
means good." 

2. A law of illumination. "The Life is the 
Light." Light has a gracious ministry. It is not 
merely an interesting subject in the study of optics. 
It does open fascinating fields of research. It offers 
many treasures of attractive truth. Unraveled by 
the prism, its constituent colors prove not only cu- 



"Light and Life/' 41 

rious but useful. The comparison of them with 
the color effects of known substances helps us to de- 
termine the constitution of the blazing runs of the 
illimitable spaces. Or we catch the light in our 
lenses and make it paint our portraits. But while 
prism and spectrum and camera are very useful, 
opening up new lines of ministry for the lovely 
light, they are not at all necessary to its most im- 
mediate and most important ministry. Not the un- 
raveled light, not the focused and deflected light, 
but just the clear white, untwisted, blessed light, 
showering upon us its free, unhampered splendors — 
this is our treasure. Not primarily to make us know 
the anatomy of worlds, not to be coaxed by our 
glasses and our chemicals into doing fine art work 
for us, but just to give vision to the eye and radiant 
beauty to the world the eye looks upon — that is 
light's first and highest function. 

Now, we have often treated Jesus in the curious 
fashion that we have treated the light. We have 
had our theological prisms to determine His nature, 
His measure, His mission. It is not wrong. It is 
interesting, useful, necessary to some degree. Just 
as the analysis of the spectrum will tell about the 
nature of the stars, so the reverent analysis of the 
great life of the Son of man will teach us some- 
thing of the nature of God. Jesus is our court of 



42 The Captain op Our Faith. 

last appeal in such study. The demand that our 
theologies shall begin from the point of His con- 
sciousness is reasonable. All our systems and all 
our sources must be subordinate to Him. Prophets 
and apostles are alike His servants. Epistles and 
apocalypse are not so authoritative as His life. The 
keen, critical study is useful, but there is danger of 
everestimating its importance. There has been a 
tendency to reverse the order of the words in the 
text and say, "The light is the life of men." We 
have scrutinized Him, made creeds, built systems 
of thought, and said life — spiritual life, eternal life 
— consisted in accepting these. Or we have organ- 
ized Churches, councils, hierarchies, and said the 
acceptance of and obedience to the infallible author- 
ity of these is man's life guarantee. But the true 
reading is, "The Life was the Light of men." 
Knowledge does not produce life. On the contrary, 
life gives true knowledge. Not by the analysis 
of His life, but by the reception of it, we are to get 
the truth. Not to the critics, but to devout and 
passionate lovers of the Son of God, did the truth 
concerning Him become known. Scribes and Phari- 
sees made Him a subject of debate, and rejected 
Him. But sinners who received His cleansing grace, 
and sufferers who felt His healing touch, and fish- 



'XlGHT AND LIFE/' 43 

ermen who staid in His company, knew the nature 
of His power and the glory of His love and the Di- 
vine mystery of His being. The contention as to 
the method of approach to the revelation of God in 
Christ is not yet over. Is it to be intellectual or 
moral? Does a soul need first light or life? And 
more and more the demand is for a vital acquaint- 
ance to meet the need of the soul and serve as the 
basis for all effective investigation. Perhaps you 
have been skeptical about some theological propo- 
sition concerning Him, and have declined His serv- 
ice until you could understand the problem. That 's 
an inversion of the true order of things. Receive 
Him into your guilt, your moral weakness, your low 
aims, and get His cleansing, His power, His in- 
spiration, and then you will have both motive and 
material for your study. 

Nor must we fail to adopt this as a law of serv- 
ice. Our lives are to be the light of men. Life is 
not for individual enjoyment, but for men. Life, in 
its completeness — inward forces and outward ex- 
pressions — is to be luminous with God. All the 
gleams of word and deed are to be vital. 

" The word had breath and wrought 
With human hands the creeds 
In lowliness of perfect deeds, 
More strong than all poetic thought." 



44 The Captain of Our Faith. 

II. The Light's Power. 

"The darkness overcame it not." This is prob- 
ably the truest putting of the thought of the text. 
It is a truth 

I. Historic. Recall the conditions. The light 
came to a people with a striking national history. 
The national life had a dramatic origin, was based 
on holy law, had been blessed with heroic leaders. 
Their institutions had the sanction and seal of the 
Most High. They had truth immeasurably su- 
perior to that possessed by contemporary people — 
truth unalterably sublime. They had a lofty mis- 
sion, the very dignity of which made them rigidly 
exclusive. Out of the religious superiority had come 
a bigoted hierarchy. Religious truth was their mo- 
nopoly. Acceptable righteousness was their manu- 
facture. Instead of liberating the light they pos- 
sessed, they hampered and limited it by vexatious 
forms. And so when the Prince of Life appeared, 
they were in opposition to Him rather than in al- 
liance with Him. Such hostility would seem no 
trifling matter to the life which had such feeble be- 
ginnings. With such a history and such a destiny, 
with splendid ceremonial and thoroughly organized 
system of worship, Israel was surely qualified to 



"Light and Life." 45 

decide whether the new teaching was true or false, 
and able to stamp out any sparks of fire and light 
which might be kindled by this Teacher who was so 
perversely careless of its judgment. And yet scorn 
and interdict, hatred and conspiracy, false witnesses 
as to the nature of the Life, and false explanations 
of its power, were alike unavailing to overcome it. 

Heathenism, product of many soils, served by 
art, enriched by fascinating legend, defended by 
philosophy, sneered and mocked at the strange doc- 
trine, but could not dim its light. Imperial Rome, 
following its good-natured tolerance with persist- 
ent persecution, tried to quench the light with the 
darkness of death, and could not. Ferocious fol- 
lowers of the Arabian prophet disputed its suprem- 
acy, ecclesiastical corruption dimmed its glory, moral 
apostasy betrayed it ; rationalism, scientific and phil- 
osophical, counted it but superstitious darkness; 
yet it has not been overcome, but shines more widely, 
clearly, powerfully than ever before. 

2. Prophetic. No defeat awaits the light. There 
are dark provinces to be illuminated, much terri- 
tory to be possessed, the final triumph is not yet. 
Discouragement sometimes unnerves our faith. The 
perfect day seems sadly distant. But the very mag- 
nitude of the light's mission should make us patient. 



46 The: Captain of Our Faith. 

Great propositions can not have their truth proved 
in a day. Small personal problems may be settled 
by the experiment of a minute, but Newton's mag- 
nificent theory of universal gravitation required 
twenty years of patient testing and waiting for 
fresh light before its verification could be published 
to the world. Jesus Christ is the light of men. It 
takes a sadly long time for a recreant world to dis- 
cover the truth of a proposition like that. But the 
proof of its truth is hastening. His life is in the 
forces which oppose Him. Those binary stars of 
your life, reason and conscience, get all their light 
from "the Sun of Righteousness." Reason asserts 
itself against His life, and is itself the product of 
that life and thrills with it. Conscience ignores Him, 
and professes to be quite independent of His influ- 
ence, and, behold, all its moral brightness is a gleam 
from His glory. All our prating about natural good- 
ness will seem like childish prattle when we under- 
stand the measure of His dominion. Some day the 
unrecognized Christ will be known, and an obedient 
world will know why its heart burned within it while 
He walked with it in its way. 

And may we not find here a promise of the tri- 
umph of this shining life in personal experience? 
Sad circumstances shadow its light, selfishness chills 



"Light and L,ife." 47 

its fire, obscuring tempers ruin the vision it offers. 
But out of the disqualifications of inherited tem- 
perament, the prisons of unfavorable surroundings, 
the power of habit, the chill of doubt, the deadening, 
paralyzing effect of failure, we shall at last come 
triumphant. The light will reach high noon in our 
souls. 

" How does the soul grow ? Not all in a minute ; 
Now it may lose ground, and now it may win it ; 
Now it resolves, and again the will faileth ; 
Now it rejoiceth and now it bewaileth ; 
Now its hopes fructify, then they are blighted ; 
Now it walks sunnily, now gropes benighted ; 
Fed by discouragements, taught by disaster, 
So goes it forward, now slower, now faster, 
Till, all the pain past, and failures made whole, 
It is full grown, and the Lord rules the soul." 



IV. 

SELF-CARE. 

"Take heed to thyself." — i Tim. iv, 16. 

"Thyself." How large is the word? Does it 
mean body ? That food and shelter may be thought 
about? That so, this marvelously skillful machine 
may be fed with the power it needs for endurance 
and achievement? This faithful reporter be kept 
sensitive and responsive to the appeal of every won- 
der, every force, every danger outside itself? "Give 
attention to thy body, to its strength, its grace, its 
beauty." Is this the apostle's meaning? This, in- 
deed, in part, since this is involved. But the world 
needs not to have any great emphasis put on this 
duty. There are some neglects, indeed, in this realm, 
neglects which demand warnings. There are some 
failures to remember the sacredness of the body and 
the greatness of its needs. But when we consider 
the vast energies given to body-service, we feel that 
no very powerful exhortation on behalf of the body 

48 



ShxF-Care. 49 

is needed. Alas! that so many have been content 
with this narrow definition of "self." Absorption in 
trade, devotion to fashion, declare that with some 
the care of the body, the decoration of the body are 
supremely important. Alas 1 that with so many oth- 
ers, sad, hard, bitter circumstances almost compel 
the belief that the body is the "self." That hunger 
and thirst and nakedness make the body a despot, 
and to feed and clothe and shelter it the supreme 
duty of man. The social state which compels so 
many people to accept this lie for the truth is wrong 
somewhere. 

Does the word "thyself" mean intellect? So a 
smaller circle believe. Emerson says : "Water dis- 
solves wood, iron, and salt; air dissolves water; 
electric fire dissolves air; but the intellect dissolves 
fire, gravity, laws, method, and the subtlest un- 
named relations of nature in its resistless men- 
struum." And those who exalt the intellect to the 
place of supreme importance, provide as the needs 
of self, books, which, as Carlyle has said, "Though 
but poor bits of rag-paper with black ink on them," 
are nevertheless the most wonderful and worthy 
things we make ; and time for meditation and train- 
ing. And attention to body and mind is partial obe- 
dience to this command, for these are elements of 
4 



50 The Captain of Our Faith. 

the complete life. Food and raiment, house and 
school, commerce and literature, are answers to this 
apostolic demand that self shall be attended to. But 
they are not complete answers. To eat and drink 
and toil with hand and brain, to think and learn 
and speak, these are not the whole round of hu- 
man duties. We are not loyal to "self" if we stop 
with these. We have not measured "self" if we ex- 
plore no further. Who does not know that there is 
something finer than bone and muscle, fairer than 
feature or form, no matter what the grace of these 
may be ; something with clearer, further vision than 
keen-eyed intellect; something mightier than deter- 
mined will; something larger than either, larger 
than all? Intangible, mysterious, immeasurable, call 
it what you will — soul, spirit — it gives to the body 
its rarest beauty, it makes the intellect radiant with 
the fires of genius, it inspires the will to its noblest 
achievements. That which is in all and through all 
and over all, deeper, greater, grander than body and 
mind which serve it, is the real self. It is this that 
relates us to God; that makes us capable of receiv- 
ing the inspiration of the Almighty, and with that 
inspiration understanding; that makes men and 
women candles of the Lord, able to catch and hold 
and give the fire of God's own life. 



Self-Care. 51 

"Take heed to thyself!" To the deepest self; 
to that which underlies all that is visible; to that 
which gives meaning and value to all achievement; 
which gives a man weight among his fellows, and 
brings him homage and trust, even though his deeds 
may not seem great. "Take heed." Make this in- 
nermost, uttermost self pure, clean, strong. Con- 
duct will then take care of itself, for this "I," this 
radiant, Godlike self will think in all thought, and 
move in all action. What are its needs? 

I. Xeeds. 

I. Vision. First, we must have our ideal You 
might say, "Better first see what the self is before 
thinking of what it should be but is not." But, no ; 
the ideal must always be first. Thorwaldsen sat one 
day before his completed statue of Christ, and as he 
looked at it he burst into tears. He is satisfied at 
last; he has attained his ideal, reached the summit 
of his ambition. He expects no further progress in 
his art. The ideal was first. Through all the long 
years of toil it had dwelt within him. The almost- 
speaking Christ that brought tears into the sculp- 
tor's eyes was a thought before it was a thing. To 
know the marble thoroughly, its angles, veins, in- 
terior soundness or flaws, this would not be the 



52 The: Captain op Our Faith. 

proper method for the artist ; indeed, not a possible 
method. He could not know the innermost facts 
of his material until he had begun to shape it to the 
lines of his ideal. It is said of Michael Angelo that 
after he had been some time at work on his statue 
of Christ, he discovered a flaw in his marble, and 
cast it aside as unworthy his subject. The flaw 
was revealed by the growth of the Christ. It is 
even so in that infinitely higher process in which 
God Himself is the Artist, and the soul is the ma- 
terial and the Son of God is the Ideal. It is the 
progress of the Image in us, the formation of the 
Christ, that most surely reveals the flaws. And so, 
if asked what is the first need of the soul, we must 
say, not the sight of its sin, but the sight of its 
Christ, and by this method as by no other, will the 
sin be seen. "Know thyself" is a wise enough 
maxim, but we must make it mean if we want to 
know the best results, know thy possible self, which 
is the real self. The sinful soul is the false self, the 
spotless soul is the true. Study the true, and you 
will best know the lie of the false. We recognize 
all this in our ordinary judgments. Sometimes we 
feel that we have been mean and low and contempt- 
ible in thought or wish or conduct, and we loathe 
ourselves. But why should we? Because we know 
that when we have chosen to be foul, we have not 



Ssi^-Cars. 53 

been true, but false to our real self. Where does the 
loathing come from? From the true self. And so 
we do have the ideal in us all the time. And the 
ideal frowns upon the real when the real is sinful, 
and the soul scourges itself for daring to be false, 
and demands that the offenses be purged away. The 
vision of Christ, for He is the soul's ideal, admitted 
to be such even by those who deny some of His 
claims. O, for a clear sight of the holy Christ! 
Angelico, the artist monk, cared for no subject for 
his matchless skill save Christ and the angels. And 
so the walls of his cell were gradually covered by 
scenes celestial and divine, the creations of his di- 
vine pencil. The bare, cheerless walls of his poor 
home, made radiantly glorious by the portrayed life 
of the Lord, whom he so passionately loved. And 
so he was shut in ever by his vision of the Divine. 
O, that we may do something similar! Take home 
and into our conception of what it should be ; paint 
Christ. Take business, and in the methods we adopt 
and the spirit we cherish, have Christ. Take our 
social relationships, our outlook upon men and in 
them all have Christ for our Ideal. 

2. Purpose. It is not enough to see, we must 
choose. The bright vision of holy manhood is not 
merely to please us with a moment's glimpse, as 
though the soul had climbed some mountain sum- 



54 The; Captain of" Our Faith. 

mit of holy vision, not for residence there, but 
simply for prospect, that some bright memory of the 
heights might cheer it in the low valley of its sinful 
life. Not this, but life upon the heights. The 
earnest choice of goodness ; to be true to the vision ; 
to have kindled within us, not only admiration, but 
determination; to have the fiber of unchangeable 
decision wrought into all the future of the soul's 
growth. How suicidal the course that refuses to 
win what is seen! The sight of the Christ, of the 
man, the woman you ought to be, is the proof that 
the soul's eye is open, and that is matter for grat- 
itude ; but it is not enough. If threading a thicket, 
are we to close our eyes to the gleaming light that 
shows the way out of the tangle into the open ? If 
climbing a peak, over bowlders and through brush, 
shall we close our eyes to the path and summit, and 
wander blindly on in danger and uncertainty? If, 
in its difficult, dangerous way in the world, the soul 
may look with wondering, worshiping eyes upon 
the Christ of God, shall it be mad enough to choose 
blindness and stumble on at the bidding of impulse 
and custom? O, to walk in the glorious light of 
what we should be! We may do this, and do it 
hopefully. When appealed to by this picture of ab- 
solute truth, radiant holiness and ministering love, 



Self-Care. 55 

which sometimes we see, we need not droop discour- 
aged. It is no moral mirage mocking the thirsty 
soul in its desert with false promises. This vision 
is the bright portrait of our possible selves, our 
real selves. We have a right to all its treasures of 
goodness. Despair has no place in us. because sin 
has no right in us. The expectation of failure in 
our struggle is sin's lie. A fall is not a failure. It 
is purpose, the soul's purpose, that tells its quality, 
not the details of conduct. It is by our purpose 
that God rates us. As Browning saw : 

" Not on the vulgar mass 

Called ' work,' must sentence pass, 
Things done, that took the eye and had the price ; 

O'er which, from level stand, 

The low world laid its hand, 
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice : 

But all, the world's coarse thumb 

And finger failed to plumb, 
So passed in making up the main account : 

All instincts immature, 

All purposes unsure 
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's 
amount : 

Thoughts hardly to be packed 

Into a narrow act, 
Fancies that broke through language and escaped : 

All I could never be, 

All, men ignored in me, 
This, I was worth to God." 



56 The Captain op Our Faith. 

It is the life's currents, not its eddies, that tells 
of its destiny. There is great fascination in watch- 
ing a mountain brook. One of its lessons is this 
of unchanging purpose; it has a goal, and moves 
toward it with steady, irresistible flow. Its purpose 
is not always displayed in the same way, or with the 
same clearness. Sometimes a furious rush over the 
cliff that lies in its path; sometimes moving with 
fuller volume and smooth surface, smooth even 
though jagged rocks lie in its bed, kept smooth by 
its own determined flow; sometimes musical, as it 
ripples in shallow cascades; sometimes silent, with 
no rocks to disturb its peace; ever moving on with 
every variety of motion. If you study the eddies 
on its edges, you might fancy it had reversed its 
decision and was turning back, but the stream 
must not be judged by its eddies. If you watch it 
smiling in the meadow, with movement hardly per- 
ceptible, you might fancy it had forgotten its pur- 
pose, and was halted forever, but the stream must 
not be judged by its local appearance. Its move- 
ment never ceases. Furious or peaceful, noisy or 
silent, in spite of rocks, in spite of eddies, it is mov- 
ing on to its ocean home. We need a purpose like 
that in the soul, a purpose unchanging, never 
checked by obstacles ; though not always straight in 



Sei^-Care. 57 

its course, yet flowing with the whole volume of its 
current Godward. 

3. Power. To be true to our purpose, patient, 
persistent, is to get power to make it effective. How 
shall the sinful things which beckon us be made 
weak, and the appealing Christ be made mighty? 
By making an absolute surrender to the purpose, 
to be Christlike. There must be no half-heartedness. 
And as a result, "the Holy Spirit shall come upon 
you, and ye shall receive power." This should be 
our plea ; not for peace, that all obstacles to our pur- 
pose be removed, but for power to conquer obsta- 
cles, even as the flowing stream carves channels out 
of the very rocks which would hinder it. The apos- 
tles, when in danger from persecution, prayed, not 
for safety, but for power to keep on steadfastly. "And 
now, Lord, grant to Thy servants power, that they 
may speak Thy Word with boldness." Power from 
the Holy Spirit! Always. A mightier movement 
toward God, as we get more of God in us. Inevita- 
bly so by a very simple law, the law of spiritual 
gravitation. As our lives get more Divine in their 
bulk, God will have a mightier attraction for them. 
There are circular processes in grace as well as in 
nature. The sea toward which the stream flows 
sends back the rains and the snows, which swell the 



58 This Captain of Our Faith. 

stream's volume, and make its strength greater. 
Surrender to the purpose to be Godlike will bring 
the power to fulfill the purpose. That means steady 
obedience, for obedience shows the surrender. Every 
act of obedience is a victory, and every victory over 
sin carries in it strength as well as triumph, since 
it adds to our stock of godliness. 

II. Usss. 

We are to note that that is written to a servant. 
We might fancy that the apostle is counseling a 
selfish course in this, "Take heed to thyself," until 
we remember he is writing to a servant, and the 
care of self is a part of life's service. And we have 
observed the right order when we have asked first 
for attention to the soul's needs, because our first 
and best service to the world is to be what we ought 
to be. "No man liveth unto himself;" the apostle 
says in his figure of the temple, that we are to be 
"living stones;" that is, aside altogether from the 
active efforts which may be made the life, as a life, is 
a necessary part of the growing building of hu- 
manity, helping on its beauty, its strength, its com- 
pleteness. Character is no mere choice personal 
property. It can not be fenced in from common 
view and reserved for individual enjoyment. Men 



Sslf-Care. 59 

sometimes do that in regard to their material treas- 
ures They build a shamefully high, selfish wall 
around a beautiful estate, sheltering themselves 
from the perhaps hungry gaze of the passer-by. But 
no such sheltering wall can be built around char- 
acter treasures. Inward spiritual treasures will en- 
rich the lives that are near through voice and touch 
and glance, as the rose scatters its fragrance, as the 
sun flings his glories through the dark spaces. And 
inward, spiritual sinfulness is volatile, like some 
powerful, poisonous fluid, and will escape even with- 
out consent to curse other souls. Influencing others 
by what we are — that supremely ; and so it is of the 
first importance that we "take heed" to ourselves 
and our own needs ; that zi'e be good, and so put 
strength into the faith of some soul which has been 
poisoned by suspicion and almost lost confidence 
in any goodness; that we inspire hope in some 
weary, struggling sinner; that we give lessons in 
love to spirits made narrow and small and mis- 
erable by selfishness. And if we attempt any defi- 
nite effort to help any one, still it must be true that 
the innermost soul must be in the attempt to give 
it any value. We may talk in words of beauty, 
words true in themselves, until death stiffens the lips, 
and if genuine, loving soul has not been sounding 



60 The Captain of Our Faith. 

in the speech, it has been of small use, like the 
doubtful music of sounding brass and of clanging 
cymbal. We may stretch forth ministering hands 
and drop generous charities until death builds about 
the muscles an unbreakable prison, and if soul — 
genuine, generous soul — has not been throbbing in 
the finger-tips, and trying to utter itself in the gifts, 
then the benefits have been the perfunctory products 
of a clanking machine. The supreme need of needy 
souls is ourselves, not anything separable from our- 
selves. And our first duty in service is to give 
self, pure, true, earnest self. And if we do just this, 
by simply living ourselves into the lives about us, we 
need not be discouraged at the smallness of our serv- 
ice. Here is the difficulty with our organized, char- 
itable work. It is a good method in the sphere of 
its operations, but it can not possibly minister to 
the whole circle of human needs. It saves waste 
of means? O yes, it is economical enough, and 
especially economical of tear-drops and hand-clasps, 
and cheery, helpful smiles. John Hall once asked, 
"Who ever saw a tear in the eye of a committee?" 
You can give a check on your money to a charitable 
society, and make it your executor, but you can not 
possibly give it a negotiable draft on your sym- 
pathy, on your own loving soul. This is no word 



Sei^-Care. 6 i 

against the society, for it has its work, and that is 
ministering to the body. But this does not alter the 
fact that within the hungry, shivering bodies which 
the society may feed and clothe there are hun- 
gry souls, and bread can not feed those souls, and 
love can. This was the need of the leper who begged 
of Sir Launfal, not bread and not water, but warm, 
loving sympathy. And so, though the offered crust 
was moldy and coarse and brown, and the water 
was given in a wooden bowl, yet 

" With fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, 
And it was red wine he drank with his thirsty soul." 

The organized charity is useful, but not as a sub- 
stitute for personal life. To make it a substitute, 
to fancy ourselves released from personal ministry 
because we pay something into its treasury, is to be 
false to ourselves, dishonest with the sad souls who 
need the touch of our lives. We must regard such a 
society, not as a substitute, but as an ally, in the 
ministering work of the spirit. 

And, now, as to the activities of the soul. What 
occupations shall we choose? What law shall we 
observe in choosing our work? The law of har- 
mony, the law of obedience. To do what the life 
demands shall be done. To study our aptitudes 
and powers, and select the task in which these may 



62 The: Captain op Our Faith. 

best speak. It is not example which should rule us 
here, but the demands of the soul itself. There is 
no reason that we should do what father or mother 
have done, because they have done it. Occupation 
ought to be the utterance of the deepest self. Choose 
the work through which the soul may best speak. 
But you say circumstances may prevent. Yes, and 
it is that sad necessity resting upon so many of doing 
what they do not enjoy doing that produces so 
much suffering. And perhaps body and mind have 
been denied the training which is necessary to forms 
of work in which we fancy the soul could best 
speak. Yes, it is true. Choices are hindered by 
circumstances. Only at least let us be true to the 
longing to speak as best we can what is best in 
us, and though the power of expression be but 
small, and the way of expression be but humble, 
the soul will make itself felt. Said Emerson: "Let 
the great soul incarnated in some woman's form, 
poor and sad and single, in some Dolly or Joan going 
out to service and sweep chambers and scour floors, 
and its effulgent day-beams can not be muffled or 
hid, but to sweep and scour will instantly appear 
supremely beautiful actions, the top and radiance 
of human life, and all people will get mops and 
brooms." And then let us remember that in being 



Sei^-Care. 63 

true to self, in doing what we can do, and not fool- 
ishly envying what some one else is doing, we best 
help on the whole work of the world. Our occu- 
pations are parts of the world's work. Better still, 
they are parts of God's work. And so we must not 
merely ask what line of work can I make most 
money at, but how can I best develop what is in 
me, and so contribute to the world's need. Now, 
the world needs more than teachers, preachers, doc- 
tors, lawyers. Its needs are innumerable, and seem 
to be increasing. It needs machinists and painters 
and manufacturers and grocers and tailors, and all 
manner of tradesmen. And we are to understand 
that in being true to these occupations we are serv- 
ing God and man. Put your soul's integrity, your 
soul's strength, and your soul's truth into every bit 
of toil you do. Not merely that you may win the 
reputation of being a reliable workman, but that 
you may know yourself to be the world's and God's 
honest servant. 

"Take heed to thyself" as a servant of the Most 
High. Be no poacher on the service of another. 
God has a use for thee. Be no copyist of the 
methods of another. Be thyself. And so will the 
whole symmetrical work of God be furthered by 
thy deed. Wield your own hammer. Strike your 



64 The Captain otf Our Faith. 

own blow at the mountain obstacle in the world's 
path. Insert your own lever beneath the burdens 
that lie on the world's life. Only strike somewhere ! 
Lift something ! Serve somehow ! Be true, ever 
true to the deep, true, spiritual self; true to the 
God who will reign, if you will let Him, in the soul's 
secret place, and His strength will nerve your arm, 
and His grace will bless your work. "Take heed" 
to thy needs, which God is "able to supply accord- 
ing to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus" and to 
thy uses, that so God's great plan may be helped on 
by thy life and toil ! 



V. 

OUR ATTITUDE TOWARD OUR TIME. 

"Redeeming the time." — Col. iv, 5 ; Eph. v, 16. 

The: Revised Version suggests a better render- 
ing, "Buying up the opportunity," allowing no mo- 
ment to slip through your hands, making your mar- 
ket of the occasion. Let us apply the principle to 

I. Getting. 

1. Paul's example. Paul was intensely Jewish, 
but he was more. "A Pharisee of the Pharisees/' 
he was not lax in his reverence for Jewish history 
and tradition as was a Sadducee. He recognized 
and emphasized the value of oracles and covenants. 
He was versed in the law and faithful in the ordi- 
nances. But he was also a Roman citizen of a dis- 
tinguished city. Dr. Ramsay emphasizes the fact 
that in the first century, when citizenship was highly 
prized and jealously guarded, the possessor of that 

dignity was put thereby among the aristocracy of 
5 65 



66 The: Captain op Our Faith. 

any provincial town. And since this was an honor 
belonging to Paul by birth, and not by purchase, 
it is probable that his family was distinguished and 
moderately wealthy. His appeal to his citizenship 
shows how he prized it; his friendly treatment by 
the Roman authorities shows how that citizenship 
had molded him. He had not the narrow, exclusive 
Jewish spirit. His breadth, indeed, was the inev- 
itable outcome of his distinctive mission to the Gen- 
tiles, but would be primarily due to his early sur- 
roundings and training. Indeed, it is not difficult 
to believe that his call by God to a world-wide min- 
istry was based upon his world-wide sympathy. 
There is an inherent fitness in the choice of God. 
Out of this breadth of spirit in Paul there came 
breadth of view, a fair, reasonable view of his age, 
a wholesome attitude toward it, and a just estimate 
of its needs and values. He was no bigot. He did 
not believe that a Jew had a monopoly of virtue, 
nor that his ancestral faith had a monopoly of truth. 
He himself tells us that he adapted himself to his 
hearers. That is, his bearing was friendly and not 
antagonistic. And with one of Paul's passionate 
earnestness of spirit, that gracious manner was more 
than a matter of policy. It was the admission of 
his own truthful soul that there were good things 



Our Attitude Toward Our Time. 67 

in the lives of those to whom he spoke. And to these 
things that were noble he appealed. He did not vio- 
lently attack the current philosophies in his original 
preaching, although he did expose their falsities 
in his letters, as in this, when they were evidently 
perverting the minds of Christians. Nor did Paul 
ridicule crude religious beliefs. He was courteous, 
just and generous in the cities of Galatia as in the 
Areopagus at Athens, acknowledging existing truth, 
adding to it from the fullness of the glorious gospel, 
until "Christ had been placarded before their eyes." 
This, then, is the attitude of this representative of 
the most high God. He was gracious, considerate, 
sensible. Clear in his view of the evil. of the days, 
but also wise in his perceptions of all existing ex- 
cellencies and merits. 

2. Our -attitude toward our age. There are souls 
whose views are very earnest, but very narrow; 
who conceive of the world as a doomed ship, fast 
breaking up and driving on to complete wreck. The 
business of the gospel is to rescue as many as pos- 
sible from the doomed hulk, and keep them in the 
safe seclusion of a religious life. Escape is their 
definition of salvation. Scorn is the proper attitude 
toward the great complex world life, with pity for 
those who have not yet been guaranteed against its 



68 Ths Captain op Our Faith. 

doom. The world's varied activities are not only 
worthless, but dangerous. They are all to be care- 
fully shunned. Now, zeal can not save that view 
from being a travesty of the kingdom, whose growth 
is to be like that of a grain of mustard-seed, with 
widening, compelling influence like that of the 
leaven in the meal. And there are multitudes to 
whom the characteristics of the present age are all 
alarming. They think with longing regret of the 
good old days, the old safe habits and methods. 
Modern educational activity they regard as a doubt- 
ful boon. Some, whose narrow circumstances and 
lack of opportunity are sufficient explanation of their 
attitude, cheerfully sing the praises of ignorance, 
and predict the doom of those who are ungodly 
enough to be eager to know. As though brains and 
religion are sworn foes in a feud which is to be 
eternal. Others, who appreciate the practical value 
of a trained mind, yet treat education timidly, as 
a somewhat dangerous ally to be caged, lest it mas- 
ter them. Modern intellectual activity is confus- 
ing, and, on the whole, deadly to faith. Modern 
literature, so vast and varied, is a tempting field in- 
deed. But the flowers are few, and the poisonous 
weeds are many. 

Now, of course, it would be false to facts indis- 



Our Attitude Toward Our Time. 69 

criminately to commend our age. Eulogy needs to be 
moderate. In our intellectual work there is plenty 
of sewerage left, though not so much as formerly. 
The appetite for literary garbage is certainly less 
ravenous than it was. And in our restless move- 
ments — political, social, and industrial — there is a sad 
lot of bad work. Corruption, snobbery, artificiality, 
and selfishness are still rampant. But there is some- 
thing besides carrion, and we will find the better 
food, unless, vulture-like, we have an affinity for 
the bad. Take the realm of thought. There is much 
that is noble in our modern literature. That is true 
in all the realms of it. In fiction there is not only 
artistic work, but high purpose and serious, earnest 
temper. The simple, pure, true things in life are 
portrayed. The moral beauties and forces of the 
soul are recognized and treated reverently. Even 
negative writers, who treat God as an unknown 
quantity, yet feel and tell the pressure and the power 
of duty. And there is plenty of good, hopeful, 
wholesome philosophy. Those dreary prophets of 
a fast-settling night, to whom the times are not only 
out of joint, in the grip of deadly diseases, to whom 
there is no goodness, to whom we are all a lot of 
degenerates, their shrieks of despair are the cries 
forced by the pain of souls outraged by their own, 



70 The: Captain op Our Faith. 

lack of faith. Take our modern religious literature. 
What volume, reach, insight, passion, it has! Was 
Christ ever so prominent? Ever so studied? Ever 
so loved? Even the fiction which weaves stories 
of more or less merit around His matchless life, and 
of which we have had a great deal recently, is a 
revelation of the fast-spreading desire to get nearer 
to Him. There is a new breath and a new life in our 
modern theology. There are multitudes of superb 
works, critical and constructive, from the pens of 
those who adore Jesus, whose perpetual attitude 
is that of prostration before Him. Why should we 
fear such writing, which glows with the fire of spir- 
itual passion? Some people do so fear. Is it hard 
to believe that God is active in the thinking of those 
who love Him? Is God present in the world of 
natural force, and absent from the world of human 
life? Get in touch with these best things in your 
reading. "Read the saints," as James T. Fields 
said was his custom. Get to feel the thrill and throb 
of the surging Christ-life in the thought of to-day. 
And our activities to-day, what about them? 
Periodicals have frequent articles on the higher life 
of our great cities. There is such a higher life. 
Civic clubs, municipal leagues, social settlements, 
college settlements, Church settlements, forward 



Our Attitude Toward Our Time. 71 

movements are the evidence of a new interest and a 
new purpose in righteousness, political, social, indi- 
vidual, Divine, for our cities, which are indeed the 
centers of the life and of the storm of our civiliza- 
tion. Man's humanity to man is deeper and broader. 
There is more pity, more justice, more benevolence, 
more intolerance of sham, a fiercer, straighter- 
backed sincerity among men. Find these things, 
these forces. Feel them, welcome them, exult in 
them, surrender to them. 

II. Giving. 

This is the special point of the appeal. "Buying 
up your opportunities" to serve. The apostle has 
not outlined a selfish policy. The world is a market- 
place full of treasures, but Christian souls are not 
doing their marketing for the purpose of getting 
choice bits of personal benefit, but to get chances to 
serve. This is the general setting of the text. In 
your relation to your fellows, buy to the full your 
opportunities to help them. 

1. The motive. "The days are evil." See the 
effect a sad fact has upon a robust soul. "The days 
are evil." Is that truth a depressing weight? No, 
it is a sharp spur. Some have said, "The days 



72 The: Captain op Our Faith. 

are evil," therefore we will retire to caves and 
dens, and monasteries and wearisome vigils and 
cruel mortifications of the flesh, and prayer and med- 
itation. Some modern worshipers say the intellec- 
tual days are evil; the theological, critical days are 
evil; therefore we will not read. We will assure 
ourselves that the blazing light of modern knowl- 
edge and modern method is only a flash in the pan, 
and we will keep in the subdued light of the fading 
past. And citizens say the political days are evil; 
therefore I will take no interest in politics, will stay 
away from the primaries, will gather close about me 
the robes of my safe, useless citizenship, lest they 
get soiled. Now, the apostolic method and appeal 
are just the opposite. The ecclesiastical days are 
evil ? Then fight the evil, do not stay outside of the 
Church and criticise it. Come inside and purge it. 
The critical days are evil? Then wrest the critical 
work away from those whose work is negative, ra- 
tionalistic, faith-destroying, and give it into the 
hands of those who are devout, and then let them do 
their work without nagging them. The political days 
are evil ? Do not stay at home and be lazy. Wrestle 
with the evil. What are your moral muscles for? 
Why should evil days dim our vision of God ? Paul 
met evil — ecclesiastical hate, philosophical scorn, im- 



Our Attitude: Toward Our Time. 73 

perial indifference, and then persecution. Stones and 
rods bruised him, hunger weakened him, mad mobs 
threatened him, prisons shut him in, Roman chains 
galled him. Did the vision of God fade out of his 
life? Ah, no! Jesus saw evil — the steely glitter of 
hate in the eyes of religious leaders, the rough vio- 
lence of hard soldiers, the gross selfishness of tem- 
ple degraders, the sensual faces of harlots, the cun- 
ning of publicans ; evil mocking Him, tempting Him, 
insulting Him. What then ? Could He not see God 
because He saw evil? Did He anticipate the wail 
of modern pessimism that God does not live because 
evil does live? Ah, no! To His brave, blessed 
eyes God was always present, shining, sustaining, 
inspiring, save in that one appalling moment, when 
the tempest of His own chosen, redeeming passion 
shook and blinded Him on the cross. "The days are 
evil!" O, servants of God, rebuke the evil, attack 
the evil that darkens and curses the days! 

2. Method. Look at the next phrase, "Let your 
speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt." 
Salt makes speech wholesome, but it makes it pal- 
atable as well. There was a fine grace and courtesy 
in Paul's ministry. Before Jewish councils, before 
Roman officials, before the Athenian assembly, his 
grace is notable. Jesus had unsparing denunciation 



74 The: Captain of Our Faith. 

for hypocrites, but the sweetest, most gracious ten- 
derness for outcast sinners. There is a great deal 
of unwritten history about the gracious manner of 
the Son of God, which accounts for His popularity 
with those who avoided the Pharisees. Be gracious 
as you go on your crusades against the evils which 
hurt your fellows. Boldness does not mean boor- 
ishness. Earnestness is not damaged by good man- 
ners. Jesus was as full of grace as He was of truth. 

3. Passion. Think of it! Paul is in prison; 
he must be very weary. Has he not earned the 
right to rest? Whatever is true about his right, he 
has no disposition to rest. "Pray for us, that God 
would open a door of utterance unto us." Nothing 
could daunt him. The time of his imprisonment 
gives him the opportunity for new ministry. Bonds, 
delays, soldiers, all the retainers of the emperor's 
household proved to be fuel to feed the flame of his 
passion to serve. Service as life's passion! This 
age is notably rich, not only because of its material 
wealth, its exact knowledge, its amazing inventions, 
its industrial triumphs, but because it is so inspir- 
ingly stocked with opportunities to serve. Is not 
that a noble, an ideal passion? 

When we contrast with it the low passions which 



Our Attitude: Toward Our Time. 75 

move men, our souls are sad that there are so many 
to whom the muck-rake is more interesting than 
is the angel. So many there are who give them- 
selves to lowest tastes. There is in the gallery of 
the Luxembourg at Paris a picture called "The De- 
cadence of the Romans" — a picture of a splendid 
hall, where a drunken feast is in progress. The old 
Roman strength is gone from the faces of the feast- 
ers, faces which are in striking contrast with the 
features of the statues of ancient Roman characters 
which are around the hall, but faces the likeness 
of which may be found in the streets of Paris con- 
stantly. That story about Leonardo da Vinci finding 
a noble youth to serve as a model for his Christ in 
his famous picture, and then later getting the face 
of the same youth, become sensual and worldly 
through long-continued sin, to serve as a model for 
his Judas, is simply an illustration of a process that 
is perpetually going on. There are multitudes in 
the grip of drink and gambling who get to prize life 
mostly for the opportunities it brings for the grati- 
fication of their own lusts. How horrible it is! 
And there are multitudes more who care only for 
life's material treasures, and not for its noble things 
of truth and duty, who gain the world and can 



76 The: Captain op Our Faith. 

gratify every taste and travel as they please to view 
its beauties and its gayeties. They have prized life 
as being full of opportunities to make money and to 
win ease and enjoyment. And there are thoughtless 
multitudes whose passion is pleasure, whose chief 
thought is personal amusement, who fritter away 
time in games, which after a time seem to grip them 
like an insanity. It can not be true that these people 
have not brains enough, breadth enough, height 
enough, soul enough to feel the pull, the plea, the 
glory of beautiful service for others. Is it not an 
awful irony when society can be engrossed with 
gossip about balls and theaters and card-parties, and 
have not time to discuss the poor and wretched and 
sinful, and to plan crusades of righteousness and 
love ? Is that the social leadership to follow ? 

O, to kindle in the fire of this apostolic passion 
to serve! Go marketing in the days. Buy up 
eagerly every opportunity to help needy souls and 
bodies. These opportunities to serve the evil-dark- 
ened age will soon be over. Let the thought of the 
rapidly-nearing end thrill us to new endeavor. What 
you have received from the age of light and warmth 
and wealth are bonds, obligations, imperatives of 
God, commanding you to serve. Our attitude should 



Our Attitude Toward Our Time. 77 

be the eagerness of an alert buyer. Our duties 
should not be our weights, but our wings. 

" ' Joy is a duty,' — so with, golden lore 
The Hebrew rabbis taught in days of yore, 
And happy human hearts heard in their speech 
Almost the highest wisdom man can teach. 

But one bright peak still rises far above, 

And there the Master stands, whose name is Love, 

Saying to those whom heavy tasks employ, 

1 Life is divine when duty is a joy.' " 



VI. 

ROBBERY. 

"Will a man rob Go d?"— Mai. iii, 8. 

The idea is repugnant. Yet, in the case of Israel, 
the charge is easily sustained. In tithes and offer- 
ings, those stipulated belongings of God, He cer- 
tainly had been robbed. With equal ease may the 
guilt of man, in this crime of theft from God, be 
established to-day. There are treasures which are 
indubitably God's, and of these men do unquestion- 
ably rob Him. 

I. He is Robbed of His Authority. 

I. God's rightful sovereignty in the life. Though 
materialism may make a great din in our ears and 
repeatedly assault our reverence, yet ordinary minds 
are simple enough and true enough to make room 
for God in existing forces and allow Him a voice 
in the disposal of events. Yet the very minds that 
find His authority in universal matter and force are 

78 



Robbery. 79 

oblivious to His presence and recreant to His au- 
thority in the control of the soul. They are not mate- 
rialists. They are "egotheists." While willing to 
admit God as the center of universal existence, they 
prefer to retain self as the center of individual ex- 
istence. It is the old Ptolemaic theory of the uni- 
verse applied to the firmament of the life. Such life- 
theory is foolish as well as false. The soul can 
never make known its astonishing, its Divine mag- 
nitudes ; the life can never spread itself out in beau- 
tiful, orderly array until God is recognized as the 
center of the being, any more than the glorious im- 
mensities of the ancient heavens could be known 
when they were interpreted by the old, puny con- 
ception of their measure. To rob God of His au- 
thoritative place in the life is to rob life itself of its 
grandeur. 

The soul in its normal state acknowledges God's 
sovereignty. Lowell pictures the first man in his 
naturalness as God-conquered, with his face up- 
turned to the heavens. The Greek word for man 
means "the upward-looking one." This native at- 
titude of the soul we return to when in experience 
we come to our vision of God. The soul and God 
are definitely set over against each other; the will 
turns from its exile of rebellion or indifference, and, 



80 The Captain otf Our Faith. 

yielding, is mastered. It may be in flashing, blind- 
ing way, as with Paul ; it may be quietly, like open^ 
ing leaf or dawning light. No matter about the 
method, so that the result be the choice of God as 
the soul's ruler. Of this rightful sovereignty men 
rob God. In neither plan nor motive is there any 
place for God or His glory. Though in the proc- 
esses of selfish living, obedience is given to God's 
unescapable laws — laws vital, chemical, social, in- 
dustrial, yet such obedience has been no tribute to 
God, but rather an offering to self, an offering made 
because such laws are preservative — ruling in realms 
of blood and muscle, energy, intercourse, trade. 
Alas, that in the culture, the comfort, the plenty of 
overflowing lives, ordinary honesty should be ab- 
sent! God has a right to supremacy in our souls. 
There are moments of experience in most lives 
when the Divine right is acknowledged. When the 
soul, in its retrospect, notes the evidences of guid- 
ance in a wisely ordered past, and worships; when 
it stands "glory-smitten" in the solemn calm of 
nature's sublimities, and these momentary submis- 
sions of the life which experience holds, are gleams 
of a glory in which the soul should evermore stand. 
2. God's authority in conscience. It will be 
claimed that the indictment for theft belongs only to 



Robbery. 8i 

those whose lives are mean and selfish and sordid; 
that if one is obedient to the moral law found in the 
soul, then God is not defrauded. This may be 
granted if the real glory of conscience is understood 
and all her leadings honestly followed. But there 
are those who deny that conscience enshrines God ; 
who tell us that conscience is just the product of 
social experience. The choice of virtue is a simple 
matter of policy — the choice is made because of 
some benefit or fancied benefit involved therein, and 
so the loftiest human goodness is disguised selfish- 
ness. Love and truth and sacrifice are but the ex- 
pressions of an intolerable egotism. Those who 
believe in the true greatness of man will not brook 
this insult to his moral nature. And this assault 
upon the dignity of conscience is easily repulsed. 
An appeal to experience will teach us that con- 
science works instinctively, and always has so 
worked if history may be trusted. Her approvals 
or condemnations have not been the tardy results 
of labored reasoning. They have been rather as 
sunbursts or thunderbolts to the soul. Voltaire, sur- 
prised into prayer in a thunder-storm in the Alps, 
is good evidence that the moral consciousness is 
instinctive and not acquired. Even though he im- 
mediately cursed his devotional folly, his curses did 
6 



82 The: Captain of Our Faith. 

not alter the fact that in an emergency of his life 
his spiritual instincts mastered him. Take the 
higher ranges of moral feeling. Think of the spon- 
taneous pity which the sight of suffering calls into 
life; of the unswerving, uncalculating fidelity to 
truth which history records. When Paul, knowing 
that bonds and imprisonments awaited him, said, 
"None of these things move me," was the splendid 
old hero a selfish, sordid calculator, planning new 
benefits for self? When Luther declared he would 
go to his trial if as many devils aimed at him as 
there were tiles on the roof, was this brave warrior 
for the truth a trader for profit? When Christ 
stood in steady, unfaltering patience, waiting for 
the scourge to torture Him; when, in His miracu- 
lous goodness, in the midst of the anguish of the 
cross, He prayed, "Father, forgive them," and in 
triumphant love cried, "It is finished," was that 
Divine character — so marvelous in its unflinching 
fidelity, so overwhelming in its sacrificing love — the 
outcome of selfish motive? The theory of utility 
as explanatory of conscience leads us to blasphemy. 
It makes Jesus a selfish schemer. 

But you say : "We have not such low views of 
conscience. We find in its deliverances something 
higher than selfishness. And because we believe in 



Robbery. 83 

the majesty of conscience, we yield to its authority, 
and are honestly wishing and working to do right 
because it is right. High principles of truth and 
justice and mercy govern us." Such a claim, if 
made, is a lofty one. Yet, even with its truth 
granted, you may still be open to the charge of 
robbing God. If the moral life has in it no prayer, 
no praise, no worship, no reverence, no love for 
God, no loyal allegiance to Him, it is treasonable. 
Any fair analysis of conscience yields the presence 
of the Eternal. If the great Lawgiver is present 
in the moral laws you obey, shall His presence be 
ignored? Loyalty to goodness must mean some- 
thing better than the worship of impersonal law 
and become rather the positive passionate move- 
ment of your soul to the living God. Not mere 
assent to the righteousness of His law. Not me- 
chanical conformity to His will — but a positive 
attachment — a union of your troubled, wayward 
heart with His strong, loving heart. A union that 
never brings a thought of His authority being a 
burdensome thing. For the authority recognized 
is the authority of love, and the obedience given is 
but the spontaneous response of the soul to the wish 
of its lover, and the goodness of the life is no mere 
calculated and treasured obedience to righteous 



84 The Captain op Our Faith. 

commandment, but rather the inevitable result of 
His presence — God's answer to the " jubilant pining 
and longing" for Him with which the soul is on 
fire. Be sure of this : If the authority which has 
its home in conscience is not recognized as' having 
its source in God, He is defrauded. Will a man 
rob God? 

II. Hs is Robbed op His Grace. 

i. In personal restoration. Grace is God's 
richest treasure and highest right. Helpfulness is 
His special prerogative. Love is His brightest 
glory. We are not to fancy that God's grace is a 
passive thing; that while His executive power is 
ceaselessly active in innumerable forces, and His 
wisdom unweariedly works itself into matchless 
plans; His love, on the contrary, simply reveals 
Him as quietly, patiently, waiting for the appeals 
of need to reach Him. This would be narrowing 
His love to the false limits of our own languid 
conceptions. Have we sufficiently thought of His 
love, not merely as a readiness to help, but as a 
passion for helping? Have we believed in the 
searching eagerness of His love? When we think 
of the ministering heavens ; when we look upon the 
bursting grain and the ripening fruit of our har- 



Robbery. 85 

vests; when we marvel at the manifold appliances 
and adaptations which make every day of life a 
miracle, do we find no suggestion of the eager, im- 
petuous kindness of God? And if in material 
things we see His face sweet with thoughtful care, 
and in material forces feel His hands ministering 
tenderly to these bodies, is there no form, no voice, 
no power through which we may learn of His per- 
fect care for our souls ? Thank God, yes ! Nature 
has no such emphatic statement of God's care for 
that which is mortal in us as the life and death of 
Jesus Christ have of His care for that which is im- 
mortal. In the face of our Brother we see the face 
of our Father. In His tireless ministry and suffer- 
ing death is the picture of God's eager grace, yearn- 
ing to take our poor, broken souls and heal them. 
Have we given room to this grace in our lives? 
Have we let it play among all our needs ? Have we 
received its pardon, its comfort, its holiness? If 
not, then we must plead guilty to this charge of 
robbing God. To solve the mighty problems of the 
soul's life is His wish and His right. To deny 
Him the joy of saving us is robbery. The conflict 
with sin is not an optional thing. The conflict is 
already upon us. It is not a mere question of sinful 
acts. It is sin within — a stain, a poison, a plague, 



86 The: Captain of 1 Our Faith. 

an inner spiritual wreck, an inferno in the soul. 
From what quarter may deliverance be expected? 
The very elements of the necessary triumph suggest 
the answer. Forgiveness is the first element. Our 
sin blackens our history. The past is unescapable. 
Reconciliation with it is necessary to harmony. It 
can not be viewed with any degree of calmness un- 
less robed with mercy. God has been dishonored 
and practically defied. His will has been outraged. 
It is not merely true that "he that sinneth wrongeth 
his own soul" — that the sinner does violence to 
himself. This is, indeed, true. The laws violated 
in sinning are not merely laws graven on stone 
tablets or written in statute-books, but laws written 
in the soul itself. The chief danger of sin is, indeed, 
in depravity rather than penalty. But because the 
law which sin is a transgression of is a law of self 
it is none the less a law of God. A foul character 
is the soul's loss, but, too, it is the soul's theft from 
God. The sin that has been wasting the soul's time 
and destroying the soul's substance has therein been 
putting its thieving hand into the coffers of the 
Most High. "Forgive us" should be in the fore- 
front of the soul's plea. Forgiveness is the offer 
and accompaniment of grace. But forgiveness — 
at least in its limited sense of freedom from penalty 



Robbery. 8? 

— is of minor importance among the sinner's needed 
benefits. Deliverance from sin itself — how shall that 
be wrought? What method have you chosen for 
victory? Is your method that of natural develop- 
ment? Do you say "there is a law of progress 
within? If the soul is resigned to its workings, 
time, the essential factor in the process, will bring 
triumph ?" Bushnell has well shown the inadequacy 
of such theory — which makes blameless holiness 
just the inevitable ripeness of ordinary growth. 
Why not follow the method in other disasters of 
the life? Here is a shattered bone. Will physical 
development restore its wholeness without the in- 
tervention of other power? Here is a raging fever. 
Will natural development cool its fires and expel 
its poison? Here, now, is a moral life, its forces 
in anarchy, its ruler dethroned, its depth shaken by 
tempests; will moral development, without the en- 
trance of any new controlling force, still the storms, 
restore unity and peace? Will you then find vic- 
tory not indeed in the uncertain outcome of an 
onward movement in which there may be no pro- 
gress, but in the determined effort of your own will ? 
That is a weary way, an impossible task. Will the 
patient, perpetual imprisonment of sinful forces 
issue in free spontaneous goodness? Though your 



88 The; Captain o£ Our Faith. 

will be strong enough to forge prison bars for your 
passions, will the grim prison which holds your 
sullen soul be a fair substitute for the free, open 
heavens through which it might wing its way, on 
wings of faith and love, to the throne and heart of 
God? The problem is not how may your soul be 
dwarfed, repressed, chained, so that its sin may be 
prevented; but how may it be brought into liberty, 
unity, glad, joyous, exultant, enthusiastic holiness? 
Can your will solve that problem? Your poor, fet- 
tered will bring freedom? Ah, no! Yet here 
stands a Deliverer, and His name is the Son of 
God. Freedom is in His hand, and He says, "If the 
Son shall make you free ye shall be free indeed." 
If you choose the prison-house of evil, when the 
Deliverer urges freedom upon you, you rob Him 
of a coveted opportunity for the action of His lib- 
erty-giving grace. 

We who love Him are not guiltless in this 
matter. When grief has settled like a pall upon 
the soul; when a bright, happy past makes present 
pain the keener by its contrast ; when the life's pros- 
pect is full of the gloom of sorrow and the terror 
of loneliness, where have we gone for comfort? 
Have we just wearily waited for the passage of time 
to dull grief's pain by weakening love's strength? 



Robbery. 89 

Have we hoped simply that busy occupation would 
beguile us into forgetfulness of our loss? Dreary 
comforters are such hopes. Treasonable, too. Have 
we any right to rob God of His right to take our 
bruised souls into His own hands and heal them? 
Shall we seek lower comforters when the Father is 
"the God of all comfort" and the Son is the "Conso- 
lation of Israel," and the Holy Ghost is the abiding 
"Comforter?" If we have trusted our God with 
our sins shall we keep our sorrows from Him? 
And then, again, in the fiery searching that has 
come in some time of solitude, and unsuspected cor- 
ruption has been revealed, what has been the result ? 
As we have found self with its "miserable omni- 
presence" in the motives of deeds that we fancied 
were pure ; as we have been filled with loathing and 
longing by the disclosures of our innermost mean- 
ness and littleness — what then? Has despair settled 
upon us? Have we tried to settle down into a 
patient endurance of some necessary sinfulness. 
Have we assured ourselves that our prayer for de- 
liverance can not be answered till death comes? 
Have we? Then we were traitors to the grace of 
God. Dare we deck death with the trophies of 
triumph which belong to the King? Grace is equal 
to this task. Be sure that the soul given to God 



90 Ths Captain of Our Faith. 

in an absolute, unalterable consecration will be 
cleansed and kept. 

2. In possible revelation. God's design is a per- 
petual revelation of His grace. And the method of 
the revelation does not change. When God would 
make known the mystery of the ages, the solution 
of sin's problem — His own entrance into human 
life — He did it not by any clear logic and persuasive 
rhetoric of statement, but by incarnation. "God 
was in Christ," and the revelation of God in the 
life of Christ is the glorious sufficient promise of 
God in us. To-day, as then, it is true that the con- 
vincing statement of God's saving power is a Divine 
life. Still it is true that the "life is the light of 
men." Christ in you is the hope of your soul's 
glory, and, too, the hope of the world's glory. 
Your spirit is God's candle, and ought to flame with 
His life. Do you withhold yourself? Can God put 
no reliance on you? Must the weary world, in its 
search for help, turn disappointed from you? If 
with burning plea it says, "Sir, we would see Jesus," 
can you make Him known? Are the varied sides 
of your life in power and plenty and wisdom just 
so many clear lenses through which the life may 
shine, so many syllables through which the truth 
may speak, so many hands through which help may 



Robbery. 91 

come? Can you say "Yes?" Or must the answer 
be, "Alas ! no ; I live for self, I simply utter myself. 
The voice of my life has no Divine tone in it, the 
flame of my life has none of God's glory in it." 
If this be your confession, then you plead "guilty" 
to this charge of theft. You are robbing God. 
Your service is His right. "Will a man rob God?" 
Mournfully comes the answer, "Yet ye have robbed 
Me." 

Robbery ! A terrible indictment. A disgraceful, 
humiliating charge. Honesty we regard as one of 
the simple, ordinary virtues; yet we are dishonest 
if we steal from God our obedience, our trust, our 
love, our service. The charge may be easily sus- 
tained. "Guilty" must be the verdict of our own 
consciousness. Yet all the crime may be forgiven, 
all the past be mercy-covered, all the soul be mas- 
tered by God. The grace we have dishonored by 
neglect or partial trust is ready to grant us a bless- 
ing that more than answers our prayers and more 
than matches our longings. 



VII. 

A VISION AND A VOYAGE. 

"And a vision appeared to Paul in the night; There 
was a man of Macedonia standing, beseeching 
him, and saying, Come over into Macedonia, and 
help us. And when he had seen the vision, 
straightway we sought to go forth into Mace- 
donia, concluding that God had called us to 
preach the gospel unto them." — Acts xvi, 9, 10. 

We may find here: 

I. God's Attitude: Toward the Needy. 

1. His answer to need. The voice of need is an 
appeal to God, an appeal to which He listens. Our 
knowledge of Him is such as to remove all doubt 
upon that point. Our God is no personalized doc- 
trine of fate, careless of the agonies of His crea- 
tures. Maurice speaks of some who would "make 
heaven clear by making it cold, and assert the dig- 
nity of the Divine essence by emptying it of love, 
and reducing it to nothingness ;" but we have not so 

92 



A Vision and a Voyage. 93 

received Him. He is no distant monarch, exalting 
Himself in spurious majesty, sufficient, apart from 
His creatures, uninterested, indifferent, not even 
curious about his own offspring. Such were some 
of the gods of man's conception. But our God is 
alert, attent, listening, eager, ministering, pleading, 
suffering; He is touched by the appealing need of 
the Macedonian pagans. 

And it is an unspoken need. No Macedonian 
voice sounds in the heavens, rather a Macedonian 
vacancy lies uncovered beneath . them. And the 
need is all the greater because unknown. The soul 
untroubled, content, ignorant of its need, blind to 
its condition, careless of its destiny, is in need more 
desperate than the soul whose alarm promises 
movement and search. And the unconscious soul, 
deaf and silent, is a pleader with God. His love 
is something more than a sympathetic readiness to 
respond to a deliberate demand made upon it; it 
is rather like the crowding, pressing atmosphere, 
eager to push its way into every vacuum in our 
nature, doing that always when not prevented by 
the impervious walls of our selfishness. As the far- 
stretching sea touches and presses upon the wel- 
coming or resisting land, and continually alters its 
outline and changes its face ; as the wider stretching 



94 The; Captain op Our Faith. 

heavens hold in their unescapable embrace the roll- 
ing earth; so the persistent love of God pressing 
upon us, seeking entrance by every inlet to every se- 
cret place of our lives, is in itself the heaven in which 
our lives are set and through which they move. So 
much is clear. Need, though unspoken, and un- 
known, is in itself an eloquent plea, moving the 
heart of the Eternal. Paul's vision was God's 
message. Macedonia was touching God's heart, 
and He answered. 

Is it our aim to be Godlike? Then we must 
carry an eager, burdened heart. Our pity is to be 
an overflowing thing. Not merely a kind of emo- 
tional reserve fund, to be drawn upon in startling 
emergencies, in nowise to be touched until the call 
is urgent, but rather a kind of balanced pressure 
in every direction, an entrance of our helping lives 
into every crevice of need. Not an occasional chok- 
ing sensation, a tremulous voice, a tear-filled eye, 
when a mutilated or starving body fronts, us; 
but a broad response, a clear, loving vision, which 
has an answer for the more profound needs of dark, 
hungry souls. We have pity for the unfortunate in 
temporal things; it is a delight to carry food and 
drink and to touch tenderly aching bodies; this is 
the practical service upon which we put emphasis 



A Vision and a Voyage. 95 

to-day; a social Christianity, a gospel of food and 
clothing and cleanliness and sanitary science and 
hospital service. And the emphasis is worthy, and 
the gospel is the very gospel of the Son of God, but 
not all of it. And when we are dainty in our distri- 
bution of pity and select the objects of it, and say 
we believe in hospitals and soup kitchens and organ- 
ized relief work, but not in missions, we may be 
good nurses, almoners, philanthropists, in a limited 
sense, but not devoted disciples of the suffering 
Christ who shed His blood for the remission of sins. 
God's notice of the needs of Macedonia was a notice 
of its spiritual need. Spiritual light and power 
were the helps needed. The suppliant is a country 
with a splendid literature, making it the crown 
jewel of the intellectual world; its philosophy gave 
it a permanent place among the leaders of human 
thought; its art made cultured Athens a very 
treasury of beauty ; but with all its wealth of learn- 
ing and grace, it was profoundly needy. "Come 
and help us," was the cry of needy Europe, where 
skepticism in regard to all truth was the melancholy 
outcome of centuries of reasoning, where unspeak- 
able corruption went unchecked by powerless re- 
ligions, where a dignified calmness toward all 
pleasure and all pain marked the loftiest type of 



96 The Captain op Our Faith. 

moral life. God knew the need and heard its cry, 
and sent the gospel of His Son. 

Has God changed? Has human need changed? 
The heart of the Eternal which then surely was 
"most wonderfully kind," has it grown callous in the 
lapse of the ages ? Or, the souls which He has made, 
related to Him, are their needs other than they 
then were? True, we are confronted by religions 
more profound, more mighty in their sway, than 
any which Paul knew of, and they have in them 
rich, moral truth. What then? Substitute the 
subtleties of Buddhism for the beautiful speculations 
of Greek philosophy; put the Koran with its moral- 
izings, and the Vedas, with their religious history 
and spiritual suggestions, in place of Aristotle and 
Zeno; put the tender humanities of Confucianism 
in place of the high moralities of Stoicism. Are 
the needs of the human soul perfectly met in these 
provisions of Modern Asia as they were not met in 
Ancient Europe? Is there no darkness or pain in 
the hearts of these modern millions, appealing to 
God and moving Him? Surely, yes. A needy 
world still clamors for His help ; still He listens and 
answers; and still His answer is in the gospel of 
His Son, the gospel of His love to man, the gospel 
of His suffering, atoning, welcoming, cleansing 



A Vision and a Voyage:. 97 

love. This is His answer. Not new Western phi- 
losophies, not modern civilizations, not religious 
creeds, not Church liturgies nor Church govern- 
ments, but the sweet gospel of the blessed Christ. 
It was a message sent through Paul. The gospel 
must be offered by a heart which knows its meaning 
and power. It was the method for God's revelation 
of Himself to ancient Israel ; the passionate, spiritual 
life of His servants was the vehicle for song and 
prophecy. It is the method of the incarnation. The 
Son of man brought the glorious truth of "God 
manifest in the flesh." It is the method of the ad- 
vancing Kingdom. God's truth is to be personal- 
ized. His power is to be carried in devoted lives. 
We need not ask why God can not speak His truth 
and give His power immediately to every soul. 
Sufficient for us to know that this is not the prevail- 
ing method with Him. His messages are to be 
carried by messengers. Exceptions only establish 
the law. We need not speculate about reasons for 
the method. It is God's choice, and His choices are 
based in wise love. 

2. God's fellowship with need. Notice that the 

voice of need is the voice of God. That need is an 

appeal to God, we easily believe. His tenderness 

guarantees His notice; but here is another attitude 

7 



98 The Captain op Our Faith. 

of His love, and a new emphasis upon its measure. 
Paul hears the Macedonian cry for help and he 
and his companion conclude that they have been 
listening to the voice of God. They have not only 
grasped the idea that the needy Macedonian has 
spoken to God, but that he has spoken for God. 
He is somehow God's representative — not only a 
suppliant for God's bounty, but a messenger to 
speak God's will. And these heralds of the cross, 
loosing from Troas and crossing the ^Egean, are 
showing loyal obedience as well as responsive sym- 
pathy. We need to learn that truth more thor- 
oughly. God has identified Himself with human 
need. Surely the life of the Man of Sorrows 
teaches us that. It is what He bids us recognize 
in His picture of the judgment. "Inasmuch as ye 
did it unto one of the least of these My brethren, 
ye did it unto Me." This is love overpowering! 
Every craving for food in feeble, famishing bodies 
is a continuance of His wilderness fasting; every 
prison bar of every pining captive a counterpart of 
the fetters of the savage soldiery in the governor's 
palace ; every shooting pain of every diseased frame 
an addition to the agony of the crashing nails and 
piercing thorns on the cross. "Ye did it unto Me." 
What a marvelous statement of fellowship! The 



A Vision and a Voyage. 99 

condemnation of the miserable victims of selfishness 
was in the fact that they had not listened to the 
pleading of the hungry, suffering Christ. 

Now, this is the lesson : The Macedonian need 
is God's cry. The response to the need is obedience 
to Him. The failure to respond is rebellion. The 
need of heathenism is the call of God. To formu- 
late reasons for carrying the gospel across the seas 
to the dark places beyond, other than the reason of 
loving obedience, is impertinent. To withhold 
money or men for economical reasons ; to draw dis- 
couraging contrasts between one missionary and 
seventy thousand gallons of rum ; unduly to empha- 
size the value of the truths of race religions, — these 
may be coverings for our treason. And every 
failure to respond is sad enough commentary on 
our own spiritual state. We are dull of vision, and 
can not see the suffering Christ in the godless 
millions; we are dull of hearing, by reason of the 
pleasing, everlasting murmur of our own selfish- 
ness, and can not hear the call of God in the needs 
of suffering man. God calls us. Reason enough 
for our going to every needy soul. It is well enough 
to show that missions are an investment and not a 
waste; well enough to prove that missionaries are 
to be reckoned among the world's statesmen, help- 



L.ofG. 



ioo Ths Captain of Our Faith. 

ing to solve political problems ; that they are helpers 
of science, contributors to literature, and benefactors 
to commerce. It is all true enough. But these are 
justifications offered to an un-Christian world ; vindi- 
cations of the ways of God to unbelieving men; 
confirmations of our faith in the presence and power 
of God, but not reasons for our action. No new 
motive from the growing civilization and develop- 
ing commerce of a heathen land ought to be needed 
by any true disciple of Jesus Christ. His wish is 
our law; and this is true even though we may not 
be in close enough harmony with Him to give per- 
fect, innermost response to the wish, for His wish 
holds all the wisdom and all the love which we lack, 
and obedience to His wish, without waiting for any 
indorsement of its wisdom by our consciousness, 
becomes a tribute to our own completed selves. If 
we do not answer God's own commandment, with- 
out searching about for buttressing facts to make 
the commandment reasonable to us, we are rebels. 
Paul heard God's call to him from across the waters, 
and he went. 

And in another way we may regard this appeal 
as the voice of God. Even while in general we 
may find in Macedonia, and the Europe to which 
it was the gateway, a profound apathy and content- 



A Vision and a Voyage. ioi 

ment with things material and transient, yet the 
call may well represent the misunderstood aspira- 
tions of these millions. The race which had pro- 
duced such colossal spirits as Plato, the moral life 
which later burst into such splendid bloom in Epic- 
tetus, how shall we account for the discoveries of 
those brave thinkers and the lives of those heathen 
saints? Are they the triumphs of an unhelped 
humanity ? We can not think it. In the intellectual 
struggles and spiritual visions of those pre-Christian 
apostles of truth and goodness is there no stimulus 
of the ever-present God? Surely, yes. God had 
not left himself without witness, nor without wit- 
nesses. Every treasure of truth was His gift, and 
every triumph of character He molded with His 
invisible fingers. And so the very aspirations, im- 
perfectly read, suggested by this call of the people, 
were the product of the present loving God. And 
to-day, is not the same thing true? When we leave 
the notice of the dense, pagan darkness to be found 
in many a benighted island and ignorant district, 
or the study of the cruel practices and debasing 
superstitions which curse myriads of our fellow 
mortals, and consider the keen aspirations of Japan 
which have changed its intolerance for anything 
Western into a welcome for the teaching of com- 



io2 Thf* Captain op Our Faith. 

plete Christian truth; consider the subtle intuition 
of the theistic Hindu; the remarkable intensity of 
belief in the presence and speech of the Holy Spirit 
in the soul, to be found in the members of the 
Brahma Somaj ; or leaving these instances of re- 
ligious fervor and ecstatic devotion which may be 
seen in these champions of eclectic religions, if we 
look at the ignorant devotee, who looking forward 
wearily to the almost endless transmigration of his 
soul, yet longs to bring nearer the time of his per- 
fection, and goes through severe discipline, aus- 
terities as cruel as any of those practiced by mis- 
guided pillared saints of early Christianity, or the 
Flagellants of the Middle Ages, are we not feeling 
in these blind gropings or splendid aspirations of 
modern heathenism the moving of God in the souls 
He has made? O, surely. And to us is given the 
supremely blessed work of giving answer to the 
God-created cravings of these dimly-lighted souls, 
the answer which has brought us peace and joy in 
the acceptance of His perfect revelation in Christ. 

II. Paui/s Vocation as God's Ambassador. 

i. A leader. From Asia to Furope! Universal 
conquest is in the apostle's thought. The astonish- 
ing boldness of the Lord is repeated in His messen- 



A Vision and a Voyage. 103 

ger. That boldness has an important place in the 
missionary, is a necessary quality in missionary 
temper, a necessary element in a missionary's equip- 
ment for battle. If he relaxes .in jot or tittle his 
claim that "the earth is the Lord's and the fullness 
thereof;" if he weakens in his expectation to wrest 
this great heritage from the grasp of usurping 
powers and present it to his King, then his strength 
is gone and his toil becomes hesitating, vacillating. 
One of the astonishing things in Christ's teaching 
is this daring universality in His claim. His king- 
dom so small, seedlike in its beginnings, is to be- 
come as a great tree. He sees the nations gather 
before Him, Himself their divider and judge. If 
we consider His human estate, such a claim is 
amazing. He had no swords to enforce it, nor 
social nor political standing to support it. And our 
conclusion might be "an inspired conception in- 
deed, but after all a daring dream." But the claim 
is not to be studied, has not been studied in the dim 
light of discouraging conditions, but in the radiance 
of His own glorious, triumphant life. It is the 
perception of what He was, not of what the world 
was, that makes reasonable the hope and vision of 
a universal kingdom. His world-embracing claims 
are not the speech of frenzied thought, but the 



104 The; Captain of" Our Faith. 

natural expression of conscious power. Now, just 
this spirit is shared by this great missionary apostle. 
He will brave any danger, assail the false worships 
of heathenism, enter the realms where the mightiest 
philosophies have held sway, storm haughty Rome 
itself, never ashamed, never resting, because per- 
suaded that he is journeying through the dominions 
of his King. This still is to be the spirit of the 
missionary toiler. How can he be supported, save 
by his Lord's vision of a regenerated earth ? Judson 
had this prophetic gaze, when, standing alone, he 
looked upon the temples of a Burmese city, and ex- 
claimed: "We stand upon the dividing line of the 
empires of darkness and light. O, shade of Ah-ran- 
han, weep over thy falling fanes; retire from the 
scenes of thy past greatness. A voice mightier than 
mine, a still small voice, will ere long sweep away 
every trace of thy dominion." 

There are certain elements in this temper, with 
its purpose of universal triumph, which should be 
noted. It is exclusive, uncompromising, aggres- 
sive. To one who did not consider the force and 
future of the truth of which Paul was the herald, 
there might be something ludicrous in this vision at 
Troas. He might be rated as an extreme egotist, 
whose vision was the child of his own conceit. 



A Vision and a Voyage. 105 

Going over to help Europe! Making his first as- 
sault upon Greece, mother and home of the learning 
in which he himself had been trained, patron of 
beauty, creator of science, earnest student of re- 
ligious truth ! A modest deference to philosophical 
opinion might seem a more fitting temper for this 
traveling Jewish teacher. And yet, while Paul ac- 
knowledges the truth taught by their poets, and 
finds their philosophic formulas useful as servants 
of the highest truth, he goes not to share the credit 
of relief with other agencies, which had already 
failed, but as the messenger of the only Savior. 
The truth as it is in Jesus, not as it is in Plato, or 
Aristotle, mastered him and seemed of supreme 
value. An exclusive temper goes along with his 
broad vision; a loyalty to Christ, which allows no 
equal place to other masters. Such a spirit- 
awakened opposition, of necessity. There was no 
chance for compromise, and so there must be con- 
flict. Persecution must come to a religion which 
flatly denies the right of local race religions to con- 
trol human life. And persecution did come. And 
Paul and all the martyrs who with him and after 
him died for the truth, scorned life which was to be 
gained by any smallest sacrifice of their faith, in- 
volved in conformity to popular custom or belief. 



106 The Captain of Our Faith. 

This is the truth which we are to hold with all 
sturdiness. Christianity is absolute. It is not an 
associate religion; it is supreme. It is not tem- 
porary ; it is final. Such a theory came into violent 
collision with the Roman policy of co-ordinating all 
religions, and is in just as positive conflict with the 
notion of all modern religionists who build a pan- 
theon in their thought, and give Christianity simply 
a share of the reverence which they impartially dis- 
tribute to all the religions of the earth. With an 
open eye for all truth, however stated, and an open 
heart for every truth seeker or truth lover of any 
race or belief, there still must be the steady, un- 
wavering allegiance to Jesus as the truth of truth 
and Lord of life. If we consider the religion of our 
love just a step toward ultimate truth, a contribut- 
ing factor toward the religion that is to be, then 
our missionary endeavors will be comparatively 
nerveless ; but if in Jesus we do actually find a reve- 
lation of the Father, and in His mastery of the soul 
the final blessing of the soul, then we shall never 
be turned from our aggressive work by the dis- 
covery of the partial truths of other religions. 
Christianity admits any servant to its fellowship, 
but is intolerant of any associate, aggressive by its 



A Vision and a Voyage. 107 

very genius, confident that it will destroy all error 
and win the world to God. 

2. A builder. Paul sails away from the shores 
of Asia with a precious freight of truth and power. 
But his departure is not because he has already con- 
quered the regions of his previous toil. Asia was 
not yet won for Christ. And not because the need 
of waiting Europe was any more desperate than the 
need of Asia. Bithynia, where Paul had tried to 
go, was probably as needy as Macedonia, and "the 
Spirit suffered him not." Not surely because the 
Bithynians had no claim upon God. One can not, 
of course, speak with authority on the reasons of 
God's choice of Europe. It may be that the element 
of readiness entered into the solution of the prob- 
lem ; perhaps the Macedonian in the vision did rep- 
resent the restless cravings of his countrymen; 
perhaps there was a conscious though mysterious 
hunger disturbing the European millions, and be- 
cause of this a peculiar readiness, a prepared soil, 
a susceptibility which promised gracious harvests. 
But beyond this suggestion, may we not find stra- 
tegic reasons? When we read this journey from 
Troas to Neapolis in the light of history, how mo- 
mentous it seems! Europe and the gospel! How 



108 The: Captain ok Our Faith. 

they have been wedded during- all the centuries! 
How the colonization and evangelization of the 
earth have been affected by this missionary journey 
of the great apostle ! It is the move of a statesman. 
His campaigns in the great centers of population, 
his burning wish to go to Rome also, are not these 
the instincts of a wise master-builder, building for 
the ages? And the same wisdom has appeared in 
the whole history of missions. The mission of 
Ulfilas, the Moses of the Goths, his Bible transla- 
tion into a barbarous language, was it not the labor 
of a prophet, was not his missionary work pregnant 
with political issues? Take the centralization of 
ecclesiastical power at Rome, the solid establishment 
of our religion at the very heart of the empire, what 
a bearing it had on the future of Europe! The 
Church staggered under the shock of the invading 
barbaric hordes, and then rallied and girded her- 
self for the conquest of those northern conquerors, 
leavening with the truth of Christ this new life 
which was to rule the world! How full of a far- 
seeing wisdom it all was ! The mission of Augus- 
tine to England, under the direction of the diplo- 
matic Gregory, what a master stroke that was! 
And Boniface, England's gift to Germany, what a 
genius! How the secular power of the great 



A Vision and a Voyage;. iog 

Prankish conquerors was made effective by his re- 
ligious system ! The missionaries of the cross have 
been wise, statesman-like in plan and method. The 
principle is illustrated in modern missions. The 
amazing interest in India, the massing of forces in 
that great country, there is in it something more 
than absorbing interest in an interesting people- 
It is the preparation for a tremendous assault on 
the very citadel of heathendom, the mightiest cham- 
pion of its intellectual power. This possible stra- 
tegic temper of Paul, and perhaps of God, which has 
been seen in missionary history, may well be an 
element in our missionary purpose and work al- 
ways. There are those who insist that we are 
called always where the need is greatest. The only 
rule by which the place of labor can be chosen is 
this rule of the greatest need. Now, the need of the 
countries may be accepted as the chief reason for 
our journeys, but not the only reason. Missionary 
toil is to have the future in view. It is a long 
process. It is not true that the evangelization of 
the world, in the sense of preaching the gospel to 
all nations, will be the carrying out of the purpose 
of the Master. He said: "Make disciples of all 
nations," not merely sound God's message in the 
ears of the nations, but save them, make them in 



no The; Captain o£ Our Faith. 

truth the loyal disciples of the Son of God. That 
will take time, and it is not only legitimate, but 
necessary, to plan our work so that the actual sal- 
vation of the whole world may be furthered. And 
so while there are multitudes in Africa and the 
islands of the sea more degraded than our own 
countrymen, there must still be a patient, persistent 
toil for the redemption of this great land, destined, 
as we believe, to wield a mighty influence on the 
world's future. The Church of Christ is strong 
enough to-day to act from all reasons; to toil for 
the faraway needy, unimportant islands and tribes, 
and move with tremendous energy and wise gen- 
erosity for the saving of the great and influential 
empires of the East. 

3. A servant. The service rendered was leading 
men to his Master. He demanded exclusive homage 
for his King, because only in such homage could 
needy souls be helped. A helper he is by the very 
terms of his call. "Come and help us." He pos- 
sesses that which would help, and so is compelled 
by its very possession to share it with others. He 
said he was debtor to the Greeks, and is now eager 
for the opportunity to pay his debt. The principle 
which explains the indebtedness is not commercial; 
he goes to the Greeks as a helper, not merely be- 



A Vision and a Voyage. hi 

cause the Greeks had helped him, for in his ac- 
knowledgment of debt he coupled the barbarian 
with the Greek, the foolish who had taught him 
nothing with the wise who had taught him much. 
Not because he has been a receiver from Europe 
does he go as a giver. It is not a process of trade. 
We are not to limit our endeavors to those who 
have benefited us. Greece had helped Paul intel- 
lectually, Rome had helped him politically, Jerusa- 
lem had helped him religiously, yet he is just as 
ready to serve the fierce Scythian and roaming- 
Arabian, who were not to be numbered among his 
benefactors. The principle of the indebtedness was 
benevolent. His love, his possession of the salva- 
tion of God, made every needy soul on earth his 
creditor. The blinding vision of the ascended Son 
of God, the revelation of that Son in him, the 
understanding of the Divine mystery of the ages — 
Christ in the soul its hope of glory, these were 
sacred treasures which he owed to every soul which 
had them not. The principle is not changed. Our 
possession of the power to help the nations puts 
upon us the obligation to do it. The Church of 
Christ niggardly in the use of her resources is dis- 
honest. She is not her own. The steward who has 
charge of large treasures of money or brains, and 



ii2 The Captain of Our Faith. 

doles out these forces which are designed for free 
circulation, is robbing the world. We do not yet 
realize the responsibility which weighs upon us. 
Our debts do not disturb us. The clamor of our 
creditor — the whole unsaved world — in our ears 
hardly ruffles our peace. We do not chafe under 
our liabilities as Paul did. Our Christ is the Son 
of man. We who love Him have no controlling 
interest in Him. He belongs to all men. And upon 
us rests the duty of putting the world in possession 
of its own. Woe to us if we fail in our trust! In 
one of Retzch's illustrations of "Faust," demons are 
contending for the soul of the philosopher. The 
angels above are watching the struggle, and throw 
roses from the bowers of Paradise at the demons. 
In the sulphurous atmosphere of the pit the roses 
change to burning coals which scorch and blister. 
So may God's blessings curse us if we attempt to 
keep them in the fierce atmosphere of selfishness ! 



VIII. 

THE INNER LIFE. 

"As he thinketh in his heart, so is he!' — Prov. 
xxiii, 7. 

This is part of a warning, not to trust the ap- 
parent generosity of a selfish man. If his invitation 
to partake of his dainties appears cordial, his cor- 
diality is assumed and miserly greed really grudges 
each mouthful. It brings the important lesson that 
the outward appearance is not always an infallible 
index to character. It directs us in our search for 
human values to the innermost man. The sentence 
is not a recommendation of egotism. It does not 
teach that as a man thinketh about himself, "so is 
he." It is not an assurance that one's estimate of 
self is certainly correct. This is not true. One's 
estimate of self may be too large, or too small, 
according as vanity or humility holds the measure. 
But it teaches that the deepest life is the real life. 
The life moves by the flow of its deepest current. 
8 113 



ii4 The Captain of 1 Our Faith. 

Its secret things determine its kind. The general 
direction of its hidden thoughts, wishes, plans, de- 
termines its goal. 

I. The: Heart Life is the: Real, Life. 

It is this real life that is closely concerned with 
God. He deals with verities. In this veritable life 
of the heart He is honored or dishonored. In this 
His presence brings terror or joy. As God sees us, 
so we are. "What thou art in the sight of God, 
that thou truly art," said good old Thomas a Kem- 
pis. The masks that men make may effectually 
cover the features of the soul from their fellows, 
but not from God. The accidents of form or wealth 
or power may lead human judgments far astray, 
but God is light, and these interposed screens no 
more hide the lurid gleams of selfishness and passion 
from His gaze, and no more prevent the entrance 
of His bright, searching knowledge, than the clear- 
est crystal intercepts the light of day. We may find 
here: 

I. A lesson in charity. Final knowledge is with 
God. Since our knowledge of the hearts all about 
us is imperfect, our measurements of those hearts 
can not be exact. God knows the total life of the 
heart. We emphasize for our own justification in 



The: Inner Life. 115 

our stern judgments the Master's principle, "By 
their fruits ye shall know them," and the principle 
is true. But we must study the total fruitage. If I 
stand beneath an apple-tree and pick up a gnarled 
specimen of its fruit, that scraggy apple is not neces- 
sarily a statement of the prevailing quality of the 
tree's crop; that particular apple may have been 
damaged by some external hostile force, some worm, 
or frost, or stone, while the rest of the fruit may be 
fair and luscious. And so also in life. We have 
false standards by which we decide what conduct 
should be. Actions which are contrary to our 
opinion of Christian propriety, are wrong. We con- 
stitute ourselves censors and dictators. We give no 
credit for honesty and purity of purpose, when deeds 
violate our standards. We have stern frowns for 
pleasures which we condemn, but no smiles for gen- 
tle, thoughtful kindness, which in our eager empha- 
sis of defects we have hardly inclination to notice. 
But it is by this unobtrusive, almost unconscious 
sweetness of the outer life that the heart-life is most 
surely revealed. We display our own heart-life in 
estimating the heart-life of others. "The good that a 
man sees compared to the evil is as his own good 
compared to his own evil." That might almost be 
accepted as a law, if we make it mean habitual sight. 



u6 The; Captain otf Our Faith. 

If a man is an adept in discovering the evil in his 
fellows, his very proficiency at least powerfully sug- 
gests too great internal familiarity with such evil. 
On the other hand, if the bulk of a man's moral 
substance is good, he will have a controlling affinity 
for goodness, and be powerfully attracted by the 
virtues of his brothers. "A man seeks himself in 
his associates." If his life is impregnably settled in 
sincerity of purpose, made bright and beautiful by 
love, then charity will lead the forces of his soul 
whenever he sets out to investigate other lives. To 
leave souls with God, who only can perfectly know 
them, is a necessary course. To establish other 
tests is impertinent. To demand subscription to 
creed as a condition of entrance to visible fellow- 
ship with those who are known by the name of God's 
Son, is to assume a right which we have not. To in- 
quire into the spiritual life of those who timidly 
knock at our ecclesiastical doors, and tenderly foster 
that life, this is the only oversight and supervision 
which we have any right to exercise. 

2. A demand for spirituality. The life of the 
world is controlled by a practical materialsm. We 
use the word "practical" as opposed to "theoretical." 
However much worldlings are disposed to admit 
the existence of the spiritual, they nevertheless prac- 



The Inner Life. 117 

tically ignore it and surrender themselves to the do- 
minion of the material. Look at our commercial 
and political activities. Wealth and place are the 
prizes toward which the crowding, pushing, fight- 
ing multitudes are eagerly moving. Those who fall 
from weariness or wounds in this disorderly mob, 
for the mass has none of the orderliness of an army, 
are pitied for a moment and then forgotten. Those 
who succeed are admired and applauded, and eagerly 
questioned for the secret of their success. The world 
is like a great market-place. The loftiest forces of 
the human soul are often measured by their market 
values. Genius is bought and sold. Thinkers who 
can grapple with eternal principles, artistic geniuses 
who can see the invisible and give enduring form 
to loftiest ideals, must consult the popular taste in 
their productions; they must think more of the 
money value or practical utility of their work than 
of its eternal truth. If they refuse, then the world 
votes them into the darkness of obscurity. The out- 
ward, the visible, the material, these mostly win the 
world's attention. Not wholly ; there are noble souls 
who live above such turmoil, who are not "of the 
earth, earthy." But mostly a man is rated accord- 
ing to his money, or according to his intellectual 
brilliancy, rather than according to his moral weight, 



n8 The Captain op Our Faith. 

or his real mental power. Now, in the midst of this 
idolatry of the material, the merely outward, we en- 
ter a plea for the cultivation of a profound spiritual 
heart-life. This is not the recommendation of an 
impracticable life ; not an invitation into a vaporous 
rhapsody of life, not a withdrawal from the practical 
concerns of life, an entrance into a dreamy exist- 
ence which spends itself in gazing wistfully and 
hopefully into a distant future. Not this. The day 
for such piety has gone by. To curse the body and 
cruelly maltreat it, in the fancy that pain is a tonic 
for the soul and pleasure its poison, is no longer re- 
garded as evidence of saintliness. To imprison one's 
self within grim walls and there chain the life to 
wearisome vigils and devotional observances, can 
no longer be accepted as a sample of the loftiest 
religion. Religion must care for the body, which is 
such a real factor in the life of humanity; must 
give close attention and worthy emphasis to the 
life which now is. And just this is one of the nota- 
ble features of the Christian life of our day. The 
Church is more and more emphasizing the need of 
practical ministries; is coming to recognize that 
clothing and food for the shivering, starving poor are 
as certainly among the designed gifts of God as for- 
giveness and peace and faith. She has adapted her 
ministries to the needs of the lives which have been 



The Inner Life. 119 

made narrow and hard and bitter by poverty and 
scorn. She is getting rid of the false dignity, 
which has so often made her fancy that splendid 
temples, and dim religious light, and solemn ritual, 
and strictly orderly methods are always necessary 
to religious devotion. She is pushing her way into 
the hovels of the poor and making them feel, by her 
practical, tangible sympathy and help, that her long- 
professed love for all the weary, oppressed brothers 
of her Master is a real thing. She is grappling with 
the social problem ; studying the social unrest ; look- 
ing with suspicion on the present social order, which 
makes possible the accumulation of vast, unearned, 
unused wealth by a few, while whole armies of their 
fellow-mortals, entitled to at least some share in the 
bounties of the good God, are fighting out their mis- 
erable existence in the filth of our cities' slums. She 
is burning with indignation over the monstrous 
oppressions of the worshipers of gold who crowd 
their enslaved victims into a joyless, despairing ex- 
istence, into cruel diseases and premature death, by 
their extortions of poorly-paid toil. Thank God for 
the growing sensitiveness on the part of His Church 
to the present, pressing, earthly needs of man. But 
the Church in all this is not teaching that the body 
and its needs must be given supreme homage; on 
the contrary, she insists that the final cure for the 



120 Ths Captain o£ Our Faith. 

social disorder and distress is to be found in regen- 
erated hearts. And along with her wisely, practical 
ministries is the glad, reverent, spiritual life, which 
is fed and enriched by these practical ministries. In- 
deed, this is the other notable feature in the present 
attitude of the Church, — the emphasis she is putting 
on the spiritual life, the demand for the conscious 
life of God in the soul. There is a growing insistence 
on the comparative unimportance of intellectual 
creeds, and the supreme importance of Christlike 
character. A spiritual life we plead for. We do not 
mean a life which finds its sole expression in the ex- 
ercises of established Church order. Not that which 
has psalms and hymns and public prayer and public 
speech for the chief proofs of its existence. But 
the life that abides in truth — truth in the inward 
parts, truth which makes it impossible that one 
should even suspect that the outward, visible life 
is a deceiving mask, wearing a semblance of truth, 
but really covering the lie of the heart; the life 
which is warm with love and gains its vision of the 
life of a brother through the lens of sweet charity ; 
the life which is gentle and tender and ready in 
sympathy; the life which is patient and long-suffer- 
ing and forgiving; the life which is fragrant with 
humility and strong with faith; the life which is 



The: Inner Life. 121 

all full of the consciousness of God's presence, which 
burns with love for Him, is promptly obedient to 
Him, is thrilled with a solemn joy when the knowl- 
edge comes that he is pleased; the pure, true, sac- 
rificing Christ life, — such a life is the evidence that 
the tabernacle of God is with man. A spiritual 
character is sufficient answer to the demand for the 
supernatural which is in the human heart. Men 
are too prone to think that signs and wonders, ma- 
terial miracles, are the only worthy proofs of the 
presence of God. There is with many an abnormal 
appetite for the so-called miraculous, as was true in 
Christ's time. There are people who will find in 
moving tables and spirit-rapping and supposed 
ghostly voices and bodily healings, more evidence 
of the presence and power of God, than in the truth 
and purity and love of divine lives. But spirituality 
is the true supernatural; a holy life is to be de- 
manded as the proof of the worth of all systems of 
jugglery and imposing metaphysical abstractions, 
which make bids for men's allegiance. 

II. The Heart Life Should be the Visibee Life. 

We are not herein saying that the heart's vices 
should be made known. We are assuming that a 
vicious heart is not a natural heart; that sin is not 



122 The Captain op Our Faith. 

necessary to a soul; that the deepest longings of 
humanity are for God; and then claiming that this 
deep-lying spring of spiritual life, which bubbles up 
in men's moral consciousness and struggles God- 
ward, be released from all its fetters, and allowed 
to flow into all the movements of the life. We are 
to be true to the deepest in us; to be willing, and 
not ashamed, to show forth our real selves ; to cease 
to be imitators of those whose individuality is a 
marked thing, and simply be obedient to the voice 
of God in us; cease to be slaves to public opinion, 
and just acknowledge the authority of the soul. 
These are our duties and we shirk them. Can we 
not believe that God has a special design for each 
immortal, or must we believe that we are all sam- 
ples of one unvarying type? We can not be con- 
tent with a monotonous uniformity of life in all its 
possessors. Christianity deals with the individual, 
and has a special mission to the individual. Bud- 
dhism sees in the extinction of the individual and his 
absorption into the universal soul the final heaven of 
the race, and in a trancelike state, in which all con- 
sciousness is lost, the very highest bliss of present 
life. But the gospel of God's Son searches for the 
individual, not to destroy his individuality, but to 
consecrate and exalt it. God wants to develop our 



The Inner L,i*e. 123 

best, our truest selves. Why not let Him? Why 
not give free expression to the heart-life in which 
God is ? Conventionality, propriety, dignity, are our 
jailers. In our fidelity to custom we are often trai- 
tors to self. Why should not our faces, our entire 
visible lives, speak the truth? Why not have them 
utter the rich life of the soul? It has been said 
that faces never lie; that the soul always compels 
the service of the face as a reporter. But this 
hardly agrees with facts. It is true, indeed, that in 
some glance of the eye, touch of the hand, word of 
the lips, the soul may reveal itself, but the revelation 
is a momentary thing, an unintentional thing, made 
possible when the imprisoning will is of! guard. 
Why not have it a constant thing ? There is a good 
deal of successful hypocrisy. The costumer's is not 
the only place where false faces are found. If the 
heart-life is the warm, pure, spiritual life for which 
God pleads and toils, why should it be repressed? 
It is, constantly. Self-denial has its place, but its 
limits, too. It is to be used in the conquest of moral 
foes, not in the repression of moral life. Yet the 
repression of the very best in us is common enough. 
If the heart is full of song, why should not the face 
be full of gladness, with shining eyes and smiling 
lips and loving voice, instead of having a carefully 



124 The: Captain op Our Faith. 

regulated, conventional smile, and a face swept care- 
fully clean of every trace of soul? If the heart is 
full of loving sympathy for suffering, why should 
the tear be kept back, and some lifeless platitude be 
given the work of conveying to the needy one the 
knowledge of the sympathy? If the heart burns 
with indignation over the villainies which oppress 
our brethren, why should not the thunders roll from 
our lips, regardless of motives of selfish policy ? And 
if the soul is made rich with some sweet experience 
of God's love, why should the lips be sealed, miser- 
fashion, so that no needy one can share in our treas- 
ure? O, that all the children of God may have a 
profound, spiritual heart-life, which shall be allowed 
to express itself through every mode of utterance 
presented ! 

III. The: Heart-upp: wiu, be; the: Ultimate L,ifs, 
and wiu, Determine; Destiny. 

Even among men this is true. Emerson well 
says, "The world is full of judgment-days, and into 
every assembly that a man enters, in every action 
he attempts, he is gauged and stamped." And that 
force in man, by which he is measured and assigned 
his rank by his fellows, is his heart-force, that which 
is his essential self. One's admiration may be given 



The: Inner Life. 125 

to ability, but one's devotion is given only to char- 
acter. This may not be true among the devotees 
of the world, whose accepted standards of manhood 
are all false, who profess to deal only with the glit- 
ter of human life and not with its gold, but true 
souls everywhere invariably detect the presence of 
soul in another, and are drawn to it as certainly as 
the heavenly bodies attract each other, and are drawn 
in proportion to the measure of the soul that draws 
near. And even of the superficial ones it is true 
that, while their vote is given for that which 
seems, their conviction is for that which is; while 
their public allegiance is given to the outer life, their 
trust goes to the heart-life. In the biography of 
Professor Austin Phelps is the record of his wish 
that his reputation among his fellows rest on the 
work of his heart rather than the work of his head. 
And this must be, for the work of the head, which 
endures, is the work into which the soul has gone. 
The heroes whom the world lets live in its history 
and its love, are those toilers with voice, or pen, or 
sword, or brush, or chisel, in whose work soul is 
throbbing. And what is true of man is a sugges- 
tion of what must be true of God. Is it not signifi- 
cant that in the picture of the judgment given by 
Christ, those who are welcomed into the joy of the 



126 The; Captain of Our Faith. 

King were those whose life-service had been such an 
inevitable expression of their deepest lives that they 
were not conscious of their own goodness? "Lord, 
when saw we Thee hungry or athirst, or sick, or 
in prison, and ministered unto Thee?" And those 
were rejected who fancied that some special occa- 
sion was necessary in order to display love to God ; 
and did not know that in their own confession that 
service was not their habit, their condemnation was 
written. It was the true, pure, helping heart-life 
that was welcomed into the joy of God. 

May we be wise in making pure, dominant and 
visible the heart-life which at last must bear the 
scrutiny and judgment of the King when all its 
earthly homes and trappings are destroyed ! 



IX. 

TRUTH THROUGH CONSECRATION. 

"/ beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies 
of God, to present your bodies a living sacri- 
fice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your rea- 
sonable service. And be not fashioned according 
to this world: but be ye transformed by the re- 
newing of your mind, that ye may prove what 
is the good and acceptable and perfect will of 
God." — Rom. xii, I, 2. 

This phrase marks the dividing-line of the epis- 
tle, the division between the doctrinal and the prac- 
tical. That which follows, however, is not to be re- 
garded as a string of practical precepts added to a 
discussion, but having no special relation to it; but 
is to be regarded as the logical outcome of the ar- 
gument — the vital end toward which the argument 
was tending. All doctrine is practical if we attend 
to its issues. All duty has truth at its root. The 
Word of God has always this characteristic. Its 

127 



t28 The; Captain op Our Faith. 

profound truth is to issue in lofty life. It has no 
speculations which are intended to provide intel^ 
lectual exercise. Its revelations are in order to sanc- 
tification. 

Some one has said, "Dig deep enough in the 
Bible, and you will find this, 'Do right/ " to which 
has been added, "Dig still deeper, and you will find 
some revelation of God's holy will." Paul has been 
setting forth in masterly fashion God's plan for 
man's salvation, and now proceeds to show its prac- 
tical bearing on man's life in Church and State. 
These two verses introduce these practical obliga- 
tions. 

I. The: Basis op the: Appear. 

"By the mercies of God." If we give that a gen- 
eral meaning, what a powerful motive is supplied! 
The mercies are innumerable. It would not take 
us long to read our entire life-history. And if we 
go back to its beginnings, we can not fail to find God 
as its Author. And not only for the origin of life, 
but for the support of it, we are indebted to His 
mercy. This we do not always plainly see. Take an 
illustration. Our civilization is a complex thing. 
There are many agencies at work in it. Many forces 
have produced it. There have been new adaptations 



Truth Through Consecration. 129 

of great forces, which not long back were unknown, 
save in their destructive outbreaks. And these adap- 
tations add to our comfort and convenience. But 
whatever the possible mechanical combinations of 
iron, and whatever the mighty energy of steam, and 
whatever the carrying power of copper wire, and 
the mysterious might of the electric fluid, we do 
not dream that iron and steam and wire and elec- 
tricity will work of themselves. Back of and pres- 
ent in all our scientific equipment in industrial 
realms, we must have the mind of man. Likewise 
we have many agencies, natural and human, at work 
untiringly to provide life's sustenance. They bring 
us food and raiment, and houses to shelter us, and 
truth to enlighten us, and burdens to call to us, and 
problems to vex and develop us. But if we say 
these materials and powers which serve us are 
merely natural or human, we are superficial. Go 
deeper. Back of nature's forces and of man's brains 
is God. And neither nature nor man would move 
without Him. "The mercies of God" is a phrase 
which is equivalent to everything worthy in life. 

But the mercies here emphasized are spiritual. 

The word "therefore" has a backward look. Paul 

has in mind the redemptive mercies. The loving 

purpose of God, the cross, the resurrection, the 

9 



130 The Captain otf Our Faith. 

quickening spirit. How we need to emphasize the 
reality of these chief facts of our faith ! Dr. Robin- 
son Nicoll refers recently to the action of the Prot- 
estant Synod in France at their meeting in 1872. 
It was the first meeting of the Synod for more than 
two hundred years. The court had during that time 
been silenced by the power of the State. But after 
the fall of the empire and the rise of the republic, 
permission was obtained to reconvene the Synod, 
for the purpose of determining the limits of Church 
membership. The question before it was, "What 
is the Christian religion, who are entitled to call 
themselves members of the Christian Church?" 
Guizot, historian and philosopher, said, "As for me, 
I am a Christian. I know what my symbol is. There 
are men sitting by me," said he, "who do not accept 
the Christian religion. They have a sincere belief in 
God. I have been careful not to deny that they 
have a religion. Let them form a deistical Church. 
I shall be glad of it ; but assuredly the difference is 
great between them and Christians." The cham- 
pion of the liberals said: "In my eyes, a man is 
a Christian who, though a sinner, has a joyous con- 
fidence in God." He denied that any specific Chris- 
tian belief was necessary to a Christian religion. The 
leader of the orthodox party moved that the Synod 



Truth Through Consecration. 131 

adopt as its confession, "Salvation by Jesus Christ, 
the only begotten Son of God, who died for our 
offenses and rose again for our justification." The 
difference between his opponent's creed and his own, 
he described as the difference between two religions. 
The liberals attempted to show that they did not 
deny the Christian facts, but interpreted them spir- 
itually. The answer given to this claim was, "When 
a fact is explained in such a manner as to make it 
disappear, that process is no longer called taking 
a spiritual view of it." They really vaporized the 
facts instead of spiritualizing them. We need now, 
as then, an emphasis on these fundamental facts, 
which Paul regards as the supreme mercies of God. 
The crucified and risen Son of God, the given Spirit 
of God. This is Paul's appeal, "I beseech you, 
brethren, by these mercies, to present your bodies." 
How little souls feel the obligations of the cross ! 
Bishop Foss has been quoted as saying in a sermon, 
"I look forward with joy to the time when in the 
long procession of the redeemed I at last stand be- 
fore Jesus Christ and thank Him for having died 
for me." And that is a prospect which may well 
bring a glow to every loyal heart. But how much, 
here and now, do we feel the obligation of the cross ? 
Paul's feeling here reaches a climax. He has shown 



132 The; Captain op Our Faith. 

the sinful condition of the Gentile world, the fact 
that the Jew was involved in equal condemnation 
with the Gentile, the whole world being shut up in 
sin, that God might be merciful to all. The new way 
of faith was after all the old way, which preceded 
the law. He has declared the peace and freedom 
and power and comfort which belong to souls who 
accept the grace of God and yield to the Spirit of 
God. 

And, now, reviewing all these mighty mercies, 
his soul is warmed to a white-heat of eagerness, and 
he exclaims : "I beseech you, brethren, by these mer- 
cies, to present your bodies." 

II. The Substance: of the; Appeal,. 

i. Dedication. "Present your bodies." This is 
very practical. If the apostle had been in agreement 
with some disciples of the newest thought, he would 
never have made that appeal. He would have known 
that there is no such thing as body. We are de- 
luded. The diseases of the body are troublesome 
fancies. There is only one substance — spirit. Mat- 
ter is an impertinent phantasm. To be sure, we are 
obliged to act as though the delusion were true; but 
that is a temporary necessity, created by ages of 
mistaken thought upon the matter. Paul, however, 



Truth Through Consecration. 133 

had not reached that point. In his belief, men had 
actual bodies, which they controlled and which they 
could present to or withhold from the merciful God. 
He is not recommending the dedication of a delu- 
sion, an unsubstantial nothing. He is moving in the 
sphere of worship, and is using its old sacrificial 
forms in his speech. There were offerings for atone- 
ment, and offerings after atonement — sin-offerings 
and thank-offerings. This appeal is for a thank- 
offering. Atonement has already been wrought out, 
therefore, "Present your bodies a living sacrifice." 
Let them be holy and worthy and vigorous. 

The body for God. Then the soul will be helped 
to grow, and the life be helped to serve. Browning 
records the condemnation of a soul who misjudged 
the place of the body: 

" Thou did'st attest, 
'T was fitter spirit should subserve 
The flesh, than flesh refine to nerve 
Beneath the spirit's play. 

Thou said'st, — let spirit star the dome 
Of sky, that flesh may miss no peak, 
No nook of earth." 

" And the sentence was this : 
'Thou art shut out of the heaven of spirit; 
Glut thy sense upon the world.' " 

And many a soul has conceived that the principal 
function of the spirit is to serve as a star in the 



134 The Captain of Our Faith. 

dome of life's sky, so as to illuminate the body in 
all its journeys and its searches. The same poet 
suggests the true relation between the two when he 
says: 

" Let us not always say : 
' Spite of this flesh to-day 
I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole ! ' 

But as the bird wings and sings, 

Let us cry, ' All good things are ours, 

Nor soul helps flesh more now than flesh helps soul !' " 

And if the body be given to God, according to 
Paul's appeal, it will help the soul, as the poet con- 
ceives its function to be. If the body be His, the 
soul will be kept from the mistake of the ascetic, 
who abuses the body, and from the mistake of the 
sensualist, who indulges it. It must be kept strong 
and clean, because it is His. He will use the strength 
of its muscles, the skill of its fingers, the light of its 
eyes, the music of its voice. Even Christ served 
through the body. His feet got wearied in the 
blessed journeys, His hands brought health to those 
who suffered, His lips spoke words of grace and 
truth. It was the dear body that was thorn-crowned 
and nail-pierced, and broken and buried and raised 
again into life for our salvation. 

2. Transformation. "Be not fashioned accord- 
ing to this age, but be ye transformed." Notice the 



Truth Through Consecration. 135 

contrast between these two words, "fashioned" and 
"formed." The old translation gives us in each case 
the word "formed," but the revision presents the 
truth of the apostle's thought. "Fashioned" has in 
it the suggestion of what is fading, but "formed" 
suggests what is permanent. "Be not fashioned ac- 
cording to this age." Paul's age was marked by 
debilitating luxury, religious laxity, and inhuman 
cruelty. The wealthy spent much of their time in 
feasting. The attitude toward religion was a care- 
less one of mere flippant tolerance, and human life 
was held in lightest estimation. Souls must not be 
selfish, or cynical, or religiously flippant. Such was 
Paul's exhortation to his day. Our age is commer- 
cial and scientific, and each of these two phases of 
our age is dangerous to religious life. The one 
offers luxury, pleasure; the other offers law, order, 
scales, crucibles, retorts. Doubtless the ultimate 
attitude of science toward religious truth is an 
attitude of uncertainty. To refrain from relig- 
ious conclusions is consistent and proper conduct 
on the part of science, since these are matters 
which lie outside its domain. But too often science 
has gone from uncertainty to denial. And the influ- 
ence with which science touches us brings the dan- 
ger that we shall think lightly of truth which can 



136 The; Captain of" Our Faith. 

not be scientifically established. Darwin yielded to 
exactly that danger. Said he: "I was very unwill- 
ing to give up my belief, but I found it more and 
more difficult to invent evidence which would suffice 
to convince me. Thus, disbelief crept over me at a 
very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate 
was so slow that I felt no distress." "Be not fash- 
ioned" by this spirit of the age. It is a danger 
which the soul may easily escape. One has said 
about Paul, that there was something of the mystic 
about him; that he had a "side door into the un- 
seen," through which he might escape at will. To 
be sure. Every soul has such a door. Only it will 
be found a front door if the structure of the life 
is faced right. And that proper attitude is contem- 
plated in this text. "Be ye transformed by the re- 
newing of your mind." Such a renewal means a 
new principle of life, which brings God into the 
range of vision, and then, 

" I but open my eyes — and perfection, no more and no less, 
In the kind I imagined, full fronts me, and God is seen 

God 
In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul, in the 
clod." 

It might seem that Paul is an advocate of cul- 
ture as a transforming agency in this phrase, "re- 
newing of your mind." But that would be a super- 



Truth Through Consecration. 137 

ficial decision. We must attend to what precedes 
and what follows the phrase. Dedication goes be- 
fore it, and revelation comes after it. And the cul- 
ture which has its root in dedication, and results in 
revelation, can not be overemphasized. Paul does 
not mean that an enlightened mind will bring a 
transformed life. History, past and current, assures 
us that transformation does not always follow en- 
lightenment. Some of the best educated men are 
the worst sinners. 

But Paul does mean that a dedicated life, the 
moral judgment of which is renewed by the Spirit 
of God, will get transformed. The transformation 
is a process, not a crisis. The dedication is a crisis ; 
and the transformation is a gradual unfolding of the 
hidden power of the act of dedication. 

III. The: Results of Obedience to the Appeal. 

"That ye may prove what is the good and accept- 
able and perfect will of God." That ye may discern 
accurately God's will. The experience which comes 
to the consecrated is the root of knowledge. We 
must not say that the only material which enters into 
our structure of the truth about God comes from 
experience. This is not so. God's truth is too wide 
for any soul to hold it. We must pay attention to 



138 The; Captain of Our Faith. 

the universal, the historic consciousness, the lives 
of the saints of all the ages. But the root of knowl- 
edge is in life. The tree gets its nourishment, not 
only from the soil in which it is rooted, but widens 
the reach of its arms and multiplies its whispering 
leaves and drinks in sunlight and air, but all the time 
its roots must spread and grasp more soil, and 
gather into its frame more chemicals from its in- 
organic home. If it does not, it will be top-heavy. 
That is the trouble with some of our theologies. 
They wax fat on speculation, tower into thin air, 
and have too little rootage in the theologian's life. 
And that is the trouble with our own knowledge of 
God. It depends upon custom and tradition and 
books, and has no roots deep down in the life. And 
when the frosts of criticism settle upon it, and the 
axes of scientific argument hack at it, and the winds 
of disappointment blow upon it, it goes down. 

We shall "discern accurately" God and His will 
when we have been "transformed." Drummond 
was given new vision by his alliance with God, and 
as he looked into nature, he declared that nature 
had been maligned, that in her history and her pro- 
cesses there was more than a selfish "struggle for 
life." There was also "a struggle for the life of 
others." He has been criticised for reading Chris- 



Truth Through Consecration. 139 

tian truth into the natural order. Well, why not? 
Is not the cross of Christ, the meaning of which 
human souls partially know, the interpreting prin- 
ciple of all the works of God? Is not the "trans- 
formed" soul best able to "discern accurately" God's 
will in the material realm? Augustine knew this 
"transformed" life, and, looking into the turbulent 
Roman world with its vexations, its strifes, its wars, 
its persecutions of what was holiest, he saw also 
the "City of God," permanent, eternal, not hindered, 
but helped by the forces which opposed it. Is not 
the "transformed" soul the best interpreter of his- 
tory? 

And so the message to us is, Get changed and 
you will see. Only the chosen three saw the Master 
transfigured. Only to the disciples did He manifest 
himself after the resurrection. "The natural man 
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, and 
he can not know them because they are spiritually 
discerned, but he that is spiritual discerneth all 
things." 



JUL 29 1904 



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